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Katasha Turner Makes “Queen” Moves in Selma

August 24, 2021 by

As a Black woman building a successful career in sports, Katasha Turner leans on past examples while leading the next generation of Selma High School (Ala.) student-athletes.

Maybe in other towns, a school’s motto is just words on a wall. But here, in a fiercely proud, historically Black community, the mantra “Quality Education By Any Means Necessary” is emblematic of the spirit that’s persisted since John Lewis first stood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

That phrase serves as a rallying cry for faculty and students to dig deep and get the job done. No one embodies that energy more than the school’s athletic director, Katasha Turner.

While being interviewed for this story, Turner fielded our questions while also shepherding student-athletes leaving her track practice. That’s Turner’s happy place—the track. She was a talented runner herself before attending Alabama State where she was a student athletic trainer for track and field, as well as other sports.

She’s now the head coach for the track and varsity volleyball programs, in addition to being the athletic director. In other words, when her student-athletes head home, she goes right back to work.

While being an AD and coaching multiple sports is a tall order, continuing to coach was never in doubt. She loves it too much. And if you know Katasha Turner, you know there was no convincing her otherwise.

Following Their Example

Turner is strong-willed, grounded and hard-working. The strong women she looked up to in her youth instilled these traits in her.

Her aunts Eleanor—who worked at and served on the board of the YMCA—and Lucille—who was the president of the National Urban League—demonstrated how women should lead. Her grandma was a retired nurse that became a prominent figure in the St. Louis political scene. She taught a young Katasha how to make her voice heard in a male-dominated field.

Turner’s mother was a single parent, worked at Job Corp as a special education teacher, and taught G.E.D classes on the side. Turner admires her mother for her selflessness and dedication to those she served.

In short, her role models set the table for a glass-shattering career.

“You rarely see women athletic directors. And I mean, you rarely see African-American athletic directors,”

Taking the Reins

In 2019, Turner became just the second woman to be an athletic director in the history of Selma High School. And as a Black woman working in sports, Turner acknowledges obstacles and hurdles are everywhere.

“It’s tough as a female because people don’t think you know what you’re doing, and it’s especially tough for an African-American woman,” Turner said. “You can have all the certifications, you can have all that. But it is a challenge because sometimes people do not think that a woman knows what she’s doing.”

The stereotypes that exist against women, and Black women in particular, often deter them from pursuing roles in sports they’re qualified for (if not overqualified).

“You rarely see women athletic directors. And I mean, you rarely see African-American athletic directors,” Turner said. Few too many Black women exist in rooms where decisions are made.

That’s why Turner belongs to national organizations that work toward greater equity and opportunity for women and minorities in sports. She’s a member of the Global Community of Women in High School Sports and the National Organization of Minority Athletic Directors, or NOMAD.

Turner said building trust and getting buy-in are important for breaking through the stereotypes she faces. To earn that trust, she continues to look for ways to enrich the lives of her student-athletes.

Finding Ways to Empower Students

According to U.S. News & World Report, the Selma student population is roughly 900 students. The makeup is 99.9% Black, with 85% living in economically disadvantaged households.

Turner is committed to providing any opportunity possible to Selma students, not just to help them explore new interests, but to keep them safe.

This past year, Turner sent out a survey to students asking what activities they would be interested in if offered at their school. The results of the survey spurred six new athletic programs at Selma: 7-on-7 girls’ football, wrestling, girls’ and boys’ golf, and girls’ and boys’ e-sports teams.

Turner launched these programs because she knows how important it is to keep students active within the school. She uses the phrase “Be. B.I.G”—her shorthand for “Believe in Being Greater”—to encourage athletes to be their very best, on the field and off.

“The streets are always waiting,” Turner said. “Sometimes kids are going home to nothing, or nobody at home. But this is a chance to do something constructive and competitive. If [students] don’t like the situation that they’re in, hopefully this can be an avenue to help them maneuver themselves into other opportunities.”

Blazing Her Own Trail

Turner is the embodiment of creating opportunities through sports. In her coaching career of 16 years, she’s coached basketball, volleyball, softball, and track and field.

She opens herself to any challenge and any opportunity that comes her way—and she takes them head on. Her attitude and drive, combined with a wealth of knowledge and experience as an athlete and coach, have prepared Turner for the job she was born to do.

And now that she’s taken her seat at the table as Selma High School’s athletic director, she’s working tirelessly to provide opportunities for her students to take control of their own futures.

“I’m being the example that my mother, my grandmother, my aunts—that they showed me,” Turner said.

Katasha Turner is making “queen” moves, as she calls them: leading by example and demonstrating just how far a fearless attitude and hard work can take you.

The future is bright at Selma High School and Turner is putting her best foot forward to make sure it stays that way. By any means necessary.


Filed Under: Program Building

How to Create a Positive Team Environment (And Win More While You Do)

July 6, 2021 by

See more in-game success by developing a positive culture in three steps.

“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”

Sure, winning is important, but so is your players’ well-being. Just like positive teams are more productive in the workforce, they’re also more successful on the field or court. A good culture can develop naturally, but it’s up to coaches to create an encouraging environment. These three small steps can make a big impact on your team.

Measure Success beyond Ws and Ls

Whether or not your team has a winning season, it’s important for coaches to acknowledge the little wins, like your team executing certain plays better, or improving in a set of stats, along the way.

Individual improvement is another way to assess how far your team has come—like if the player who racked up the most penalties or fouls in your earliest games has cut that number in half by the end of the season.

Stats that align with your coaching philosophy are a good way to measure progress, but success can also be measured by your players’ individual and team efforts.

Involve the Entire Team

One of the key things students learn from high school athletics is the value of participation and teamwork. It’s easy to focus on your top performers, but great coaches find ways to make even their least skilled players feel like MVPs.

Be consistent in your interactions with players and find ways to involve your entire team (including the non-starters) in practices, workouts and game prep. Consider an exercise where players take turns discussing what each member brings to the team. This can reassure everyone that their contributions are key to the team’s success, no matter if it’s points scored or morale boosted.

Reinforce Good Behavior

On the team or individual level, positive reinforcement is generally more effective than punishment when it comes to changing behavior—and it creates a more constructive atmosphere on your team.

Players learn from your example. If they see you praising their teammates for good behavior rather than coming down on them for poor performance, they’re likely to do the same (even when you’re not around).

Take a few minutes in each review session to go over highlights—ideally before you begin the physical part of practice so the team is energized. Letting your players access game video helps them share these moments with their parents and friends, and giving them the opportunity to do this on their own will ensure you don’t need to devote too much important practice time to it.

For more ways to engage your athletes, check out our guide to building your coaching philosophy.


Filed Under: Program Building

One Strength Training Program for Your Entire Athletic Department

June 17, 2021 by

 

Want to know why you should get all your athletes in the weight room? James Coffey, Maine high school athletic director and coach, can explain.

 

Starting and maintaining a unified strength program for your entire athletic department is easily one of the most beneficial things you can do as an athletic director. It’ll help you build a winning tradition, prevent injuries, improve physical and mental strength—and definitely help you tally up wins.

So why doesn’t every high school in the country have one?

Well, that’s complicated.

Certainly there are schools in this country that have top-notch weight rooms that rival many colleges, but that’s the minority. There are also schools, particularly in districts where money is tight, that have nothing. No weight room, no strength coach, and maybe not even an athletic trainer. 
In my previous district, it took a full five years to entirely implement our strength program. We had some resources, but it still involved a lot of trial and error before we really had high participation and a rock-solid program. Once it was implemented, we offered the program after school, and in the summer, we had a program running three days a week. The first summer after implementing the full program, our combined athletic department fall record was 92-13. 

We’re now in my current school’s fourth year of having one strength program. After some improvements to our weight room, and settling in with a highly respected local strength coach, we’re starting to see player improvement and fewer injuries. 
If you’re looking to start a strength program at your school, there are two main elements you need: a room and someone to run the program. 
 

Use what you have

 
Do you have a weight room currently? If so, is the equipment safe and up-to-date? If you don’t have one, try to find an open space you could use. 

My school’s weight room was super small. It was cluttered with old Nautilus equipment and big bulky machines. We actually gave away a bunch of the old equipment we weren’t using to create more space. Then we discovered a storage room adjacent to the weight room that was full of old, unused equipment. We got rid of a lot, found another space to store the rest and knocked the wall down between the storage room and our weight room. That expanded our weight room by over 500 square feet. 

We laid down a new rubber floor, bought a mint condition rack of dumbbells (5’s-100’s) from a local resident, and were able to secure three new power racks. In a few months, spending just the money we had available, we were able to significantly upgrade our facility.

A lot of second-hand equipment is still in great shape and costs a fraction of what you’d spend on new weights.

 

Who runs it? 

 
In a perfect world, you’d have an expansive weight room and a nationally certified strength and conditioning coach, but it’s just not the reality for most schools. For a lot of athletic departments, only the football program does any strength training and that’s usually run by the coaching staff. 
So what resources do you have that you could leverage? Do you have a PE teacher, coach or an athletic trainer that has a background or certification in strength training? Is there a local gym you could contract through? Is a parent/guardian or booster group connected with a strength coach in the area?

In one school I worked in, we contracted a respected national organization to come in and run a two day, in-service workshop for our coaches. All of our coaches were certified to their standards, and we used that training to implement a strength program for our athletes. It worked well for us.
My current school contracts through a respected local gym that’s geared toward athletic performance. They provide us great service at a reasonable cost.

 

Create a program for everyone

 
Our program is simple, yet effective. We aren’t sport-specific, and that’s key. Our goal is to make our kids stronger, better athletes through a foundation built on basics. We change the exercises each session, but every workout follows the same simple structure:

 

  1. Push something
  2. Pull something
  3. Squat
  4. Hip hinge
  5. Carry something

 

Make sure to have a lot of varying weight options to cater to all your athletes.

This broad framework allows you to differentiate instruction between kids based on their abilities. Not by sport. Every athlete in every sport can benefit from a strength program. And so can your school.

 


Filed Under: Program Building

How to Build Better Leadership Programs for Your Student Athletes

May 17, 2021 by

With remote coaching becoming the new norm, athletic director James Coffey explains why leadership programs are more beneficial than ever to high school athletic programs.

Whether it’s a program that’s open to all students, or only used as a training program for your captains and team leaders, the benefits of a leadership program can be huge for your athletic department.

I’ve had the opportunity to start and also participate in many leadership programs during my career. Some I started myself, others were team efforts with members of the coaching staff or our league. Every one has been different, with their own strengths and challenges, but the overall result has always been the same—we gave student-athletes valuable lessons in leadership and skills for the future.

Make sure the program you create is geared towards your student-athletes.

There’s no right or wrong way to create a leadership program for your athletes. Every high school in the country is different, with all of us having unique communities. It’s important to make sure the program you create is geared towards your student-athletes and addresses the issues you all face as a community.

Ask yourself these questions as you get started:

  • What makes your community and school unique? What programs can you tap into?
  • What area does your community and school need to improve?
  • What can your student-athletes benefit from knowing?

Here’s how we set it up.

This year, at Falmouth High School (Maine), we’re conducting our second cohort of the Casco Bay Leadership Institute. It’s a terrific leadership program that fits our student-athletes well.

The roots for this program were actually growing before I came to the school. One of our head coaches was interested in doing his own leadership program for his student-athletes and had started planning it out. He had a long career in the Maine Community College System and used that experience (and his contacts) to recruit some highly qualified guest lecturers and teachers for the program.

During the interview process for my current position, I talked about wanting to start a leadership council. After starting at the school, this head coach learned about my interest and approached me with his proposal. I was blown away by what he had created.

We sought funding through a grant from a local bank and were able to open the first cohort last year to fifty student-athletes.

Here’s how it works.

We have four main components that make up our program.

  • Seminars—we cover the essential building blocks of effective leadership.
  • Self-discovery—instruction on how to find your leadership style and how it translates into leading others.
  • Group lectures—proven leaders, from a variety of professions and backgrounds, share and discuss their experiences.
  • Service learning projects—gives students a chance to demonstrate their leadership skills.
Guest lecturers give our students a glimpse of the professional world they’ll soon be entering.

We run our program over two consecutive Saturdays. The seminars account for seven hours of classroom time, and include:

  • Core Principles of Leadership
  • Leading Groups Effectively
  • Identifying and Understanding Personal Leadership Styles
  • Leading with Ethics and Values

Once the seminars are completed, students participate in an eleven hour community service project. They can immediately use the leadership skills they learned in the classroom.

The service learning department is one of the strongest components of our program. Our staff does an incredible job of reaching out to community partners in the greater Portland area to give our students the opportunity to perform hundreds of hours of community service each year.

Make your program work for you.

Our students are very driven academically. We send kids to the best colleges in the country year after year. It’s a high-performing district with students who want to be well-rounded and are focused on their own achievements. I know this isn’t the case for every high school, but that can just be another reason to implement a leadership program—to motivate the unmotivated student-athletes.

This type of program fits our school and student-athletes well, but it’s important to remember this certainly isn’t the only way to conduct a leadership program. We used the resources we had to benefit our student-athletes in a way that helps us.

If you concentrate on your community’s resources, and finding the right fit for your student-athletes, the benefits will be worth the effort.

James Coffey attend­ed Endicott College in Beverly, MA where he got his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Sport Management. He has spend the last four­teen years as an ath­let­ic direc­tor at three dif­fer­ent high schools. Coffey was named the Massachusetts Secondary School District A Athletic Director of the Year in 2012. He has also spoke about the pos­i­tive effects of social media on ath­let­ics at sev­er­al New England conferences. 


Filed Under: Program Building

External Team Communication

March 4, 2021 by

Pat Fox – Head Football Coach, Pontiac Notre Dame Prep (MI)
Coach Fox is a football coach. We believe that his message is applicable to all programs and all sports.
The following content is provided by Glazier Drive


Filed Under: Program Building

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