Football Coach Convention Focuses On Safety
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - Each year Minnesota high school football coaches gather for an annual convention. What stays the same are the relationships, renewed and reborn. What changes are the issues, and in 2015, it's a whole lot about safety.
Each coach comes for a weekend, wearing their school colors, with the goal of interacting with and learning from each other.
At Minneapolis North High School, coaches have asked their players to turn the program around. So the coaches feel they should have a similar attitude.
"As much as we try to tell the kids to get better, this is an opportunity for the coaches to learn from other coaches," Minneapolis North coach Charlie Adams said. "I'm like a kid in the candy store when it comes to the coaching clinic."
The man running the convention is Jim Dotseth, a former coach himself. He loves the annual get-together, because it's his kind of people.
"The best part of it is all the coaches from around~ the state of Minnesota coming together," Dotseth said. "We get a chance to exchange ideas. We bring a lot of high-value coaches. .. The coaches learn, they get to take notes and go back and try to improve their programs."
In the middle of the convention is Gophers coach Jerry Kill, a coach's coach who loves to sit back and talk football. He climbed the ladder by attending every seminar he could find.
"I was like a gym rat," he said. "I'd take my piece of paper and pencil and I went to every session, and I just ate up everything like a sponge."
Equipment is sold at the convention, because keeping the game safe has become a paramount issue.
"Our equipment now is better than it's ever been," Becker coach Dwight Lundeen said. "Our helmets, our shoulder pads, our girdle pads -- I have no problem with my grandson or any of those guys playing football. I think it's a very safe game."
The State High School League has jumped in to implement more rules, many pertaining to practice schedules and how much time you can spend on the field. It's all part of trying to get proactive and keep numbers up.
"The Minnesota State High School League has put some new rules and expectations on us as coaches," Fairmont coach Matt Mahoney said. "I think it's a great thing what they're trying to do."
The bottom line is parents need to know their kids are safe, and it's now the responsibility of this group to create the proper sales pitch.
"We've got to have the moms and dads behind us, and we're going to have to sell it at the lower levels," Lundeen said. "If we don't get them fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade, we're not going to get them. So we have to make sure we're selling our program to the right people in the right way.
