Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
One of the unsung coaching skills, skills that “Joe Fan” doesn’t even realize exist, is time management during tournaments. With the creation of “three seasons” for basketball through whatever black magic came up with this, coaches now spend two-thirds of the season managing players on foreign floors, in towns far away from home, with little fan support.
What used to be the classic “home and away” format of playing teams twice, whether they’re in your conference or not, or playing close rivals in other divisions, as Riverton and Lander used to do, as Rocky Mountain and Lovell also did, along with Sheridan and Buffalo, we now have tournament season, conference season, and the post-season. Conference season requires the home and away of teams within the league for…you guessed…seeding at regional/post-season tournaments. Unless they’re hosting a tournament, most of the gyms in Fremont County are quiet almost every Friday and Saturday night through the long winter months.
In managing a team at a tournament, first and foremost, you’re dealing with hormone-charged teenagers. Kids who respond to instruction at varying levels of attention, or inattention, who don’t always make great decisions, but still must be left alone to their own devices for extended periods. It’s the type of situation that would wilt a weaker, less dedicated person than a good head coach.
I know of coaches who were terminated after the kids in their charge went off the rails, far from home, with parties, arrests, and alcohol-fueled destruction of motel rooms.
The problem with tournaments is downtime; there can be a lot of it. If you play in the 9 a.m. game on Thursday morning, then have a semi-final opponent late Friday evening, you have to find things for the kids to do besides eat, lie in bed, or watch other games.
Tournament sites have gyms closed to practice. It makes sense when you have the huge geographic draw of something like the Class 1-A or Class 2-A West Regional tournaments in Riverton and Lander.
Practice gyms in Fremont County are closed during the three-day tournament for competing teams. That means the Chiefs can’t get in a quick practice at Alfred P. Redman Jr. gym, the Cougars can’t work on a press-breaker in the Purple Palace, and the Rams can’t get a few last-minute instructions in a half-court trap before going back to Lander.
But, as a guy who likes to find loopholes, I found one long ago when the first two days of the Five Rivers Conference Tournament were held in Byron, with the finals in Powell. Our tournament packet indicated we couldn’t practice at Lovell High School, Lovell Middle School, any of the three gyms in Powell, or the smaller gyms still available at Deaver and Cowley.
It didn’t say anything about “private” facilities. I had a Mormon friend in Lovell who was always a fan of Shoshoni, remembering the Wranglers from his playing days back in the 60s.
We opened in an early game at Byron, rolling over Wind River by 35 points. We were scheduled to play the Chiefs in the semi-finals on Friday with tip-off around 7:30 p.m. That’s a lot of downtime.
My late friend, Alfred Redman, took his Chiefs to the Medicine Wheel site near Lovell to keep them active that Friday afternoon.
My Lovell friend dropped the keys off at the Church of Latter-day Saints gym next to the block-long complex on Main Street.
We entered and found a full-length, hardwood floor, much better than the tartan surface of the Lovell High School gym at the time.
We ran the boys through a few drills, shot around, and did a little strategy session for about an hour. While the guys ran a little continuous fast break drill, I thumbed through a stack of scorebooks piled up on the back row of the bleachers near center court.
I was amazed. There were books for kids aged 8 to 10, middle school-aged books, men’s league, women’s league, and open class scorebooks. They played a lot of church basketball in Lovell.
They played other Mormon church teams from Wyoming and a lot of places in Montana.
It explained something everyone knows: playing a game makes you better at that game.
It was the old argument I grew to detest about Wyoming Indian basketball. “Sure they’re good, they don’t do anything else,” some clueless character would claim.
The kids in Lovell played just as much ball as the ones in Ethete. Maybe that’s why the Wyoming Indian / Lovell rivalry was the greatest ever in Class 2-A basketball. That’s another home-and-away that should return if tournament season could be scaled back.
Our problem in Shoshoni was that the kids didn’t play except in the season. We had good athletes, sometimes great athletes, but they didn’t get the court time some of the other schools received in their younger players.
We eventually augmented that with 30 or so summer games in team camps, but it wasn’t the same. The kids always had an adult, usually me, watching over them. In that environment, they never hone those skills that create a Myron Chavez, a Tim Winland, a Craig Ferris, or a Morning Rae Ferris, skills that the kids developed on their own through trial and error against older, stronger players.
Playing all the time isn’t a panacea; it never has been. Misguided parents send their kids into single-sport routines in vain attempts to get them an edge; it never works.
What does work is good coaching, with kids that already have a good start on a skill set to play the game, learning those skills in unsupervised play.
If all you had to do was roll out the ball, as many claim the Chiefs and Lady Chiefs do each fall, it would be easy. It isn’t ever easy.
Wyoming Indian returned to the floor last week. The boys and girls are talented, arguably as good or better than those legendary champions of the past.
The magic of watching the teams get better each week under the excellent tutelage of Lady Chiefs head coach Aleta Moss and boys’ head coach Craig Ferris is all part of the fun.
The girls split this opening weekend, losing close against defending state champion Tongue River and by a surprising 12 points against Sundance. They beat Glenrock and pounded Wright.
The boys are loaded. They’re 4-0 after slapping the mercy rule on a pair of teams and rolling over the other two by 30+ points.
One of my favorite posters from long ago, when Alfred was coaching the Chiefs, was a banner that read “We don’t rebuild, we reload.” It had a six-gun with Wyoming Indian players as bullets being loaded into the chamber.
It’s going to be that kind of season for head coach Craig Ferris and his boys.