(upbeat music) - Having evaluation with me, but I think you're always harder on your good people. And that's one thing that I wanted to do a better job of last year is really coaching the coaches. And I'm in a position to do that 'cause I've got some good coaches. And that takes a lot of work. Coaching the coaches is harder than coaching the kids. There's no doubt. (upbeat music) - Hi everyone, this is Libby Pacheco from the THSCA. Welcome to season four of the Coaches Call podcast. This season, we'll keep delivering content to help you tackle all the different aspects of coaching. From the personal side of what it means to lead to the professional challenges we know you face every day. With basketball and soccer seasons upon us, we want to encourage everyone to stay connected and engage with the Texas Way. This program is designed to foster positive sportsmanship across the state, and we're already seeing that positive impact in our fall sports. Positive sportsmanship is something our students, schools, and communities value deeply. So let's continue building on the momentum so we can ensure it remains a core part of Texas athletics. Finally, as leaders in community, education-based athletics, we encourage you to shine a light on all the good things happening in your program. Today, more than ever, it's important to show how athletics positively impacts students, schools, and communities. Whether it's a hard work, character, or achievements, every day brings something worth celebrating. So don't let those moments go unnoticed and unshared. When you share your stories, you're helping build support for programs and strengthening our communities across the entire state. Thank you for tuning in, for supporting the podcast, and all you do to support the THSCA. Together, we will continue to help coaches help kids. - Did you know that you can use podcasting to not only share the great news about your athletes and your programs, but as a fundraiser for your booster club? Yes, Lone Star Gridiron produced the fifth podcast in history and has been doing it 20 years. We are expanding now to do shows outside of football. So whatever your sport, reach out to us at 713-269-4620, and we'll discuss how you can use this amazing tool to supercharge your program. And the best part, we do all the heavy lifting. Text your name and school to 713-269-4620. (upbeat music) All right, everybody, welcome back to the Coaches Call. I'm Chris Daley, and as usual, I have some amazing guests today. First, I'm gonna introduce Brian Gibson, the AD from Wink, and I'm gonna let Brian introduce the other guests, 'cause he's gonna be conducting. So, coach Gibson, I'm just gonna hand the mic over to you. - All right, well, thank you for having us, Chris. I wanna open up by thanking the Texas High School Coaches Association for allowing me to moderate this podcast and for bringing some great leaders from across the state. We're gonna collaborate and share some ideas that we have. Join us today, we'll be Jason Richards from Mule Shoe High School, Kobe Davis from Louisville High School, and Greg Vols of Wink High School. Coaches, I wanna turn the attention to you for just a second, let you tell us a little bit about yourself before we get started. Coach Richards? - Yes, sir, first off, thanks again for doing this. I think this is a great tool that the THSCA has put together. My name is Jason Richards. I've been the Athletic Director and Head Football Coach at Mill Shoe for the past five years. Everybody thinks I'm crazy, 'cause I took this job from Corpus Christi Flower Bluff, where I was offensive coordinator for six years, but I'm originally from Columbus, New Mexico, so I had to get back to the wind and the cold, so I feel right at home. - I understand. Coach Davis? - Hey, everybody, again, appreciate THSCA for having us on here. Talk about some evaluations today. I am in my 20th year in the profession. Coach basketball for the majority of that time was a coordinator for 10 plus years, and now I'm the Associate Athletic Director for Louisville ISD. And I've been in this role for three years. We've got 400 plus coaches and five high schools and 15 middle schools. - Wow, man, Coach Woyles from Wink High School? - Yeah, Greg Woyles. I am the current defense coordinator here at Wink. I'm my 20th, 60 year of coaching. The AD, Head Football for 10 years, but seven years in Brackettville, two years, New East East Canyon. And I made an assistant stop in Crane before I came over to Wink. - All right, well, I wanna thank everybody for joining us. We're gonna talk about the end of season evaluation, that dreaded thing that all teachers and coaches really hate, but it can be a positive tool for growth. What we're gonna do is we're just gonna have a kind of a round table discussion. Feel free to add anything that you want to. I'm gonna start off with Coach Richards and ask you how important is it for self-reflection in this process of the evaluation? What areas should you focus on when evaluating your own performance? - Coach, that's a great question. And that's funny, you bring that up 'cause I had a meeting this morning with my associate head coach and things were going really good at Millshoe High School until they weren't. We suffered a couple injuries and we had a really good football team. And one thing I did a bad job of when I first became an athletic director is there was some things that I don't want it to say negative that really weren't up to my standard or bothered me. And you know, at a 3A high school, you know, your DB coach goes to basketball and your offensive coordinator goes to basketball and the coaches are everywhere. One thing I did a bad job of is I waited kind of till the end of the year to do those evaluations. I think it's real important to do those evaluations and talk about growth immediately once that season is over and maybe create some better habits or, you know, talk about what they're doing good. And we wanna use our evaluation process as a tool of growth. You know, I was a teacher for a long time too and I don't want this to be and I got you. It's a growing tool and every time I do an evaluation, I don't leave out stuff I gotta get better at. And I think that helps create an environment where we're both growing. - Yes, that's very good. Coach Davis, you know, when we do these evaluations with our peers, a lot of times that is felt a attack, a personal attack on them. What advice would you give to coaches who feel defensive or discouraged by negative evaluations? - You know, I think that like coach just touched on a little bit, you know, everything is an opportunity for growth. You know, I think one thing about coaches and you guys know as well as I do, we're gonna be harder on ourselves than anybody else. And you know, I like what he said about saying things that we could do better as evaluators and athletic directors, but I think to me, it's not necessarily the negative feedback that maybe comes from the evaluation. It's the coach's response to that negative feedback. And to me, that tells me a whole lot more about the character of that coach versus maybe some shortcomings that they had there in the year or things that we wanted to improve upon is how they're gonna attack that again with a growth mindset and an opportunity to get better. - I'm gonna ask coach Vol's this question because a lot of times in the smaller schools, finding time to have the conversation about the end of season evaluation. You run out of time to find that piece of conversation to growth. And I'm gonna ask coach Vol's how coaches can proactively seek feedback from their evaluators if it isn't offered. Well, sometimes it's kind of a hard deal to get done. But the best way I see it is ask your AD or ask coaches, hey, how's everything going in your eyes? Is it going well? Is there things I can improve on? There are things about your program that somebody else may see, hey, you may wanna try this, you may wanna try that. Just proactively get their opinion on your performance or your program's status. - All right, I'm gonna go back to you, coach Richards. As an athletic director and a head football coach, how do you use this conversation piece to build your relationship with your staff? - Well, coach, I've been very fortunate. I've retained some really great coaches. We've been together for five years and I've got a good mix. I've got young coaches that's in their fifth year and I've got some coaches that have been doing it 25 plus years. But I really want my coaches and I'll be the first one to tell you. And when I'm wrong, I'll tell you when I'm wrong. And I think that's helped foster an open door policy with my coaches. I'm not gonna correct a coach on the practice field, on the court, on the ball field. But I do think we've built a culture where they can come up and say, coach, I don't think I handled that right. I don't think I had so and so in the right position or whatever comes and we'll work it out. And I'm big enough to, I check my ego at the door with those guys and I'll say, "Hey, I don't have an answer for you, but I'll get you one." And I think it's real big for our coaches to have mentors outside of our buildings. And I think that's something we've lost here lately where when I was working for Brandon Davis and Jim Slaughter and those guys, we didn't need an evaluation. We got told immediately when something wasn't right, but you know, it's a different world, man. And you've almost got to treat the coaches like the kids and I don't mean from a maturity standpoint, but you got to handle each one different. And I'm probably harder on my better coaches than I am my younger, more inexperienced coaches and some of those guys probably should, you know, have an evaluation with me, but I think you're always harder on your good people. And that's one thing that I wanted to do a better job of last year is really coaching the coaches and I'm in a position to do that 'cause I've got some good coaches. And that takes a lot of work. Coaching the coaches is harder than coaching the kids. There's no doubt. - Yeah, there's a lot of truth to that. Coach Davis, in a society today where it's a win now attitude and everybody demands success at an early age or early stage of the program, how can you take evaluations to go beyond wins and losses to really address culture, the player development and the long-term program goals? - You know, I think it's obviously like you said, it's a win now society, but I think the intangibles are the things that are so important. The things sometimes that don't show up on the scoreboard. How are these coaches interacting with the community? How are they contributing to the overall campus culture? That's huge. Well, we had a big, this past June, we had a coaches round table and it was voluntary for coaches to come attend and we had about 60 coaches attend that. And one thing that I think kind of spurred from those conversations is the impact and mental health of this you gotta win now and how it affects the kids. And we had head coaches in there, we had assistant coaches and they all were sharing how they were handling this within their programs because, you know, obviously there's a ton of pressure on coaches to win but there's an equal amount of pressure on kids to perform. And so having that open line of communication and being able to handle situations differently and giving kids tools to be able to cope with that, you know, sometimes I think we all want to look outside for these great coaches, but I'm pretty blessed to have some really great coaches in Louisville ISD and we really tend to lean on each other and learn from each other. And it's been some of the greatest professional development that we've been able to have. - Coach Voils in your experience, what are some of the key questions that evaluators should ask to foster a productive discussion? - Well, my experience as I'm evaluating, we're sitting here discussing things, I always ask them what they think of what, how their program went this year. Prove the door, let them kind of critique themselves the way you can step in and agree with them or disagree with them. And it also allows just a little more non-formal discussion. Maybe they'll be a little more open about what they need to work on than you can touch base and kind of the thing they need to work on or something they're doing really good. - Okay, Coach Richards, staying on this topic of the role of the evaluator, do you have a specific piece document that you use to guide your conversations with? Or is it more of just an informal conversation piece and you kind of document it at the end? - I do, Coach, and I struggled with that. And I came up with my own, I reached out to some other athletic directors that had a lot of more experience than I do. And I finally found an evaluation report that I like, I got it from Cody Crane at Cattle Mills. It's pretty, it's a, you know, I've got, I've moved forward to giving it to the coaches and they bring it back. And then, you know, I'll do it myself. And I found that the coaches are kind of harder on themselves than what I would be. And I don't read it word for word, but you know, it's pretty much an excellent satisfactory needs improvement or unsatisfactory. And then it's got comments under each point of emphasis. And you know, I don't go over all of it. But, you know, I found those coaches are pretty hard on themselves. And most of my evaluations end up, you know, telling them how good of a job they are doing. And then, you know, the things they want to work on, we try to build a process of working on those things. - Okay, Coach Davis, I've asked you a little bit about this, the elements of the effective evaluator. What role of transparency do you believe really place an effective and constructive fair evaluation for them? Are we completely honest with everything that has gone on? Are there certain things that the administration would prefer to, you know, hold back? How much transparency do you really give the coaches in that? - You know, I think transparency is huge to create an open line of communication. Between '80s and coaches, you know, we need to foster trust and a culture of continuous improvement. You know, trust is big to me over it. You know, we've had, you're dealing with different coaches unless you have built an established a relationship with those guys over the course of the year, they may not sit down and be truly honest with you on how they feel and maybe won't be as transparent. But the more trust that you can build with those people and help them understand that you are there to help them grow. And like Coach said, we're here to coach coaches. I think that's the evaluations that I've found to be the best or the ones that have some deeper to trust that has taken place. - So, you know, speaking from coaches that was, you know, I was an assistant coach for many years as well, Coach Vols, what would be your best advice that you would give coaches as they're preparing for their post-season, end-to-season evaluation? What advice would you give them in preparing for that? - Be open to suggestions. Now don't be, don't feel like you're being criticized. Go into it, looking for how to get better. Truth hurts sometimes, you know, do a good job, you know, it happens. Have an open mind, go into it, learning, trying to learn from the experience. Everybody at the end of the day, everybody wants to be better. So take an opportunity to learn and get better. - Yeah, Coach Richard, you had mentioned this a little bit already about how you've grown and learned how to be an evaluator and effective evaluator. Would you care to share about anything that where you might have mishandled an evaluation in the past and what you learned personally from that experience of mishandling an evaluation? - I think, you know, just growing as an athletic director and you know how hard it is, I know your role's the exact same as mine, Coach Gibson, is it's really hard to evaluate a men's basketball coach if you're just going to games. You know, I got to get to practice. I've got to pop my head in to off-season practice, you know, and see the whole picture too, 'cause all programs are at different places. You know, we might go 10 and 10 or whatever it is in basketball and that's a great year. You know, with what the talent level and the amount of work and you know, we have our kids, we're very fortunate that my head coaches and my coordinators, we're six through 12. And you know, I really feel like our sub-varcities are the backbone of our program and the competitive level will take care of itself if we do a great job at those sub-varcity levels. And, you know, I'm probably harder on my coaches and how they handle junior high athletics and sub-varcity than I am varsity competition. - Coach Davis, what do you require of your coaches to bring to this meeting whenever you're having this end-of-season evaluation? Do you make them bring stats, player progress, culture profiles, what do you guys require of them? - I wouldn't say necessarily that we bring stats. One thing that we've started doing the last couple of years is we do a free-season evaluation. It is a short three question, basically a form that we send out and we ask them a few questions. How do you intend to grow relationships with your stakeholders? How will you measure success this year and what do you need from me? So those are the three things that we talk about. So obviously when we get to the post-season evaluation, we expect them to come prepared to answer those questions and one of the questions, one of my favorite questions in our post-season evaluation is how does it feel to be coached by you? And that's an opportunity for them to self-reflect. Again, I'm not too tied up with stats. As involved as I can possibly be watching these coaches coach every day and obviously we know how they've done as a team and how far they've advanced in things of that nature. So all of our coaches also do exit interviews with their staff and with their players and I always appreciate the coaches that come and share a little bit of how their players felt to be coached by them and how their assistants felt to be coaching in their program. - So I'm gonna wrap this up a little bit and I'm gonna start with Coach Vols and kind of throw the same question to everyone here. What do you feel like the ultimate goal of this end of season evaluation needs to be from an administrative standpoint and also from a coach's standpoint? - I believe it's a good tool to grow within yourself as a coach and your programs are growing. It just a good, like I said, it's a good tool to use to get better, to learn from and to get better as an overall program. - Coach Richard, you got everything to add to that? - No, I think that's great. And I just wanna hit on Coach Davis real quick. I think that preseason evaluation is a great idea and I'd be interested in maybe shooting you an email when we get done with this and kind of pick your brain a little bit on that. But you know, I think the whole key is, as human beings is to grow and get better. And that's what we're trying to do. And you know, I'm not trying to get coaches, but there are points where you gotta have documentation too. It's things aren't going the way they need to be going and you don't wanna just up and reassign or you know, unfortunately get rid of a coach. You gotta have that documentation. And I think adding that preseason piece could be something vital. And I'm not trying to be negative, but I think, you know, I'm a big documentation guy and keeping the documentation. And then sometimes you gotta revisit things, you know? And I think I've probably gotten more out of my coaches, evaluations than they have. And I know it's been a positive growth tool, but this was great guys. I really appreciate it and some good ideas. And I'm glad we got Coach Davis on here somewhere a lot smarter than us to teach us something. Amen to that, Coach Davis, you got anything to add? - You know, ultimately I wanna make sure our visions are aligned. You know, we're really, really big. And so it's an important communication is crucial. So we wanna make sure we're all on the same page. But one thing I wanna make sure that young coaches understand is that evaluations are an opportunity for us to identify leadership potential. You know, whether that be assistant coaches to be head coaches or maybe positions in future athletic administration. So, you know, don't just dismiss it as this is my heart. Gotta get that evaluation done because you're building your resume every day. And it tells us a lot in how those evaluations go. - Yep. Once again, I'd like to thank the THSCA for this opportunity to collaborate with some of the best leaders in the world. We hope you enjoyed your time with us. Hope we're able to provide some valuable insight. Feel free to reach out to any of us anytime that you want. And I'm gonna send it back to you, Chris. - I appreciate that Coach Gibson. And I appreciate the heck out of everybody who's been a part of this because you're right, this is valuable information. And I love this format where we can get a whole bunch of input from people who live it, who boots are on the ground. And yeah, nothing better. I appreciate all y'all. (upbeat music) - Yeah, of course I wanna thank our guests, but I also wanna thank you. I wanna thank you for giving me what I consider the most valuable thing you can give, your time and your attention. And I know you don't do it to hear me. You do it for the great messages provided by the THSCA. And hey, if you'd like to associate your company with the THSCA and the Coach's Call podcast, limited sponsorship opportunities are available. You can reach out to me, Chris Daily, 713-269-4620, or head over to my website, freshmediaworks.com. Once again, thank you so much for supporting Texas High School Coaches. Please share this show out to everybody you can so that we can help share these important messages. Thanks again, and we'll catch you next time on The Coach's Call. - The interviews in this show are brought to you by the Texas High School Coaches Association. THSCA provides to its more than 26,000 members access to the people, events, tools and resources to help them thrive in the profession, become trusted leaders in their communities and live balanced and successful lives. The work and sacrifice coaches do every day is vital to the development and success of student athletes. The THSCA supports these efforts. We fight for every coach, provide them with the connections and resources to improve their lives and help all student athletes throughout the state enjoy lasting success. The mission statement is simply this, to help and serve Texas High School Coaches as they work to help and serve student athletes, helping coaches help kids. For more information on the THSCA, visit www.thsca.com. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
