This post could be subtitled, how to lose your team in under five minutes... meaning, when your players hear the same dumb shit over and over they begin to tune out the coach, they also begin to lose respect for said coach especially when the coach is proving to be so fucking inept at his job that it's painfully obvious to all that they are good and fucked until said idiot is sacked... sadly, in high school sports, it takes a lot for a coach to get shitcanned during a season, equally sad is the fact these kids can't ask for a trade (it's high school) or transfer schools (where they'd have to sit out and then most likely be barred from playing in the playoffs as per state rules) so effectively they are stuck with what they got... and this very unlucky group of kids had a fucking nitwit... the word inept keeps coming up a lot but maybe i should just call him what he really is... and immature asshole who was fucking abysmal when it came to coaching... it really is hard to fathom how someone who has been around a game so long had managed to learn almost nothing about it... i'm not a fucking astrophysicist but i'm pretty sure if i'd spent thirty odd years around a bunch of people who were i'd have picked up a rudimentary and working knowledge of the subject... amazingly, Coach Cageboy had managed to learn nothing in all the time he was around the game... and even less when it came to running a program...
There is a belief i have in coaching that the best coaches are not wholly fixated on their sport... guys like Phil Jackson who are reading philosophy and literature, yes they may relate the knowledge gained back to their sport but what it really points to is a level of intelligence, they are more than just a "coach", that's nothing but a title, they are humans, thinkers, problem solvers, they enjoy figuring things out... it's one of my favorite parts of coaching... if i scout your team i will figure out a way to beat you... if my team is weak in a certain area i will find drills and ways to practice our weaknesses so that my team gets better, all the while i'll explain why and how it will do this, how sometimes we have to do the shit work in order to get to the fun stuff, i get my team to understand the method to my madness... and my team's have always responded... part of that too is because i listen to my players, one of the biggest faux pas committed by Cageboy, he didn't fucking listen, if you don't listen and respect your players they damn sure aren't going to listen and respect you... it ain't fucking that hard, yes as coach you are the boss but a good boss knows the more information they have the better prepared they'll be...
Cageboy's teams were shit when it came to passing, they had horrible movement, their shape was fucking awful... and why? because someone never bothered to correct the problems... after one of the rare wins they played American football instead of practicing... now i'm all for making practice fun and rewarding my teams but the fact is when the team is deficient in any number of areas, particularly in passing, i'd have used that practice to work on getting better... yes the team was coming off two games in three days, make it a light and fun practice, keep it to an hour or so, get shit done and then send the team home to relax... it's something i learned from my old college coach, he stated there was never any reason to practice more than two hours, we all knew how to play, practice was to work on certain things, to fine tune... he talked about not wasting time and energy, practice was posted outside his office down to the minute, by the end of the season (a season that was 35 games, our record was 28-7) we were practicing for 45 minutes, the guy knew what he was doing... Cageboy on the other hand couldn't organize a fucking one car parade without fucking it up and having a meltdown and blaming someone else...
And yet the team hung around... they had slim playoff hopes and in the last four games it would come down to winning out, a daunting task considering that two of those games were against two of the top three teams in the section... they won the first game (which they should have as it was against the section doormat) and then came up against one of their biggest rivals, a team based in a community filled with horrible shitbags but that's a post for another time, the same team that had openly stated the year before how frightened they were of the I-mac, a high compliment coming from one of the best coaches around... and yet what would Cageboy do? he'd cut his minutes, which was interesting as when they played the best teams he usually played more mainly due to being the only credible offensive threat they had, he sat the team's best defender the whole game, the kid didn't even get on the field, he played his nephew and his boy crush major minutes, they had one good chance when the I-mac burst through and ripped a shot the keeper just tipped wide... they lost 1-0...
At the half down one and needing a spark he came up with what might be the dumbest fucking formation in the history of football... basically moving the left wing into the center of the field to clog up his own striker's space because they felt it would give their left back a chance to get up the field more... what? anyone who has played FIFA on Playstation would understand this was fucking flat out stupid, it didn't create space it clogged space, i actually kept asking the I-mac, he meant to do this? it was beyond idiotic... and yet not only did he mean to do it he did it with two players who were basically useless, it was as if the last thing he wanted to do was win the game, as the I-mac came off for the last time with roughly 20 minutes to go he was visibly angry and stood in front of his coach and asked if he was going back in, Cageboy apparently stuttered and uttered some gibberish... he did not get back in... at the final whistle, the father of the defender who didn't play walked down behind the bench and let Cageboy fucking have it, he screamed he was the worst fucking coach he'd ever seen, that he was an abomination and should fucking quit and that the team deserved better... call it the first domino...
It was after that game the defender left the team... it was after that game a steady stream of players started going to the athletic director and letting him know about their coach... a couple more parents let their feelings be known as well... for the record i had never said a word to Cageboy though i was never shy of letting my opinion be known and could only guess that Cageboy knew it... if asked i often said he was the worst coach i'd ever seen and lay out all the aforementioned reasons, then i'd state that given the info i had he was even worse as a human being, i would often state that this was not issued with malice, i was well aware of my son's issues and what effect that would have on any coach though a quality coach would have a better grasp on handling it and getting one of his best players on the right track, but given all this clown had spewed, not only was he a shit coach but a horrible human being as well...
They were now on the outside looking in when it came to making the playoffs... as i told the I-mac, it was his junior year when they should have been a lock and had his coach not been an imbecile they would have had a chance this year... just not with nephew and boy crush as his main attackers, there was no chance of beating any good team, these two were like the invisible men in those games, one didn't notice them because they couldn't even get on the ball... the team now needed help to make the playoffs and had one of the best teams in the section up next, at home, a must win... a day before the game Cageboy had pulled the I-mac aside and told him he was going to start, Cageboy said the reason was because he wanted to win the game... think about that statement for a moment...
In what could only be called a moment of clarity Cageboy had come the realization? had an epiphany? or maybe just inadvertently admitted that not only was the I-mac his best offensive player but that the reality was he had fucked him over but seeing now as the rumblings were getting louder and the guy's job i believe was on the line, he needed him to win... i told the I-mac i'd have laughed in his face and told him he's fucking joke as a coach and that if he really wanted to win he'd have logged the minutes he deserved all season... see that was the problem and one Cagebooy made sure to run from every time the I-mac tried to talk to him, every other player on the team was given the benefit of the doubt when it came to playing time they "earned" even when they didn't... boy crush was fucking awful and yet never lost substantial time, Cageboy would shove him back on the field somewhere as long as it didn't involve his nephew losing time, every time the I-mac brought this up to an assistant (as stated Cageboy would run away) he'd be told some bullshit excuse... he dribbled too much or played too slow... the fact was he didn't and the film (the games were all filmed) would prove him right, in fact he openly told Cageboy he'd be happy, in fact wanted, to sit down with him and watch the film but somehow Cageboy couldn't find the time... when it came to slow play and over-dribbling boy crush and nephew were the biggest offenders, boy crush usually dribbled away from goal, missed about a half dozen chances to pass the ball and then would either lose possession, foul or pass it back to the defenders... nephew wasn't much better...
But when it came to making your own luck no one was as bad at making good luck as the I-mac... and once again he would somehow take one step forward and three steps back... (to be cont.)
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