Getting ready for Week 1

Thoughts as we begin the Fall '18 Cardinal Football Season:

We have spent the summer preparing for the season. Our strength and conditioning department has worked with our athletes, preparing them to compete against athletes that are much larger and stronger than they faced in high school. Our academic department has worked hard planning and preparing to support our athletes academically as they begin this new chapter. And our coaching staff has spent the summer breaking down films of our upcoming opponents to prepare game plans that play on our strengths and our opponents weaknesses. In a few days, we will see how well we have done.

A strong Strength and Conditioning program is critical to the success of the individual athlete, and to the program as a whole. It prepares them for a whole 11 weeks of the season and prepares their bodies to take on the wear and tear of a 12 week, 11 game schedule in one of the toughest football conferences in America.

As far as working on game plans during the summer, we have broken each Gameday down into 2 days during the summer. We watch every tape of our opponent from the year before and game plan as if we have to play them in 2 days. It makes the actual game planning come fall a little easier and gives us a base of an idea of what we think will work and what we can do to put our student athletes in the best possible position to be successful.

Thoughts as we begin Semester 2:

Honestly, to say that I was not confident about the ePortfolio assignment for our last class would be an understatement. I sought help from someone who had limited knowledge of Google Sites for a ten minute tutor session and then jumped in. I felt good with my end product, and was successful, but I would have preferred to use one of the other platforms. Now that I have some experience, I am looking forward to bumping it up a notch and having the time and opportunity to learn Wordpress.

I feel like I already Blog, to an extent, using my Twitter account. In this day and age, football coaches at the College level are expected to have a Twitter presence for recruiting. Recruiting high school students now starts with Juniors, sometimes even earlier. The more you can get a high school student’s attention, the better. The more you’re able to market your program with graphics and more media, the more enhanced and better chance you have to reach teenagers to grow your program, not to mention fans and alumni of your program.

As far as moving from Twitter to an actual ePortfolio blog, I really liked the reference Dr. Harapnuik made to connecting dots vs collecting dots in his August, 2015 post. It reminds me of all of the individual sticky notes I have used over the years, meaning to pull them together, but never really getting to it. The ePortfolio seems to be a good way to collect and connect all of those individual thoughts and ideas. He also refers to an ePortfolio as a learner’s digital evidence of meaningful connections. I kind of feel like your ePortfolio not only gives you a place to post your meaningful connections, but also gives you a place to refer to for previous connections where you might find yourself asking, “what the heck was I thinking?” You’re able to see different variables that affected the post such as moods or things that influenced you when you posted originally.

References:

Harapnuik, D. (2015, August 4) Minimalist Definition of an ePortfolio. Retrieved from http://www.harapnuik.org/?p=5934

Harapnuik, D. (2015, August 4) Connecting Dots vs Collecting Dots. Retrieved from http://www.harapnuik.org/?p=4935

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