Please say your name and then the classes you teach here. Coach Olson and I teach Freshmen PE, Adaptive PE, and Varsity PE.
What motivates you to do your job? Completely the students and that’s kind of going back to my experience as a student and really responding well to the teachers who I thought cared and pushed me to be my best. I didn’t always love it at the time, but years later I remember that. I know being a kid today is tough and I just try to make that experience a little bit better.
What do you do to motivate your students to care? I think number one would be building relationships and getting to know them. The second thing would be accountability. Also, being motivational, whether that be through sharing stories or music. But I’d say the main piece is just relational and going through shared experiences together.
What’s the funniest thing that’s happened at a practice that you’ve coached? The funniest thing that’s happened at a practice, man. I should have more fun at practice. One time this kid was going in for the layup and he got super into it and just completely missed the basket. The whole team just lost it and it was just a really funny moment I shared with my team.
Where’s the funniest place you’ve seen a student? Oh, I mean, I live here now so I feel like almost every time I go out, I run into a student. But I think the interactions are funny. One good time was when I saw a student when I went out to lunch in the afternoon and I saw the same student when I was at Target later on that day. I was like, I gotta be able to go out without you following!
Do you and your team have any pregame rituals? Yeah, I’m kind of a nerd for routine so we shoot immediately after school, we do our walkthrough, and then we do our scouting report. And then they have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I have that stuff for them.
What’s your favorite pregame snack? I don’t eat on game day. My stomach’s churning on the inside. I eat a ton after the game, but before a game, I cannot eat.
Growing up, what was your favorite subject in school? Oh, man. I was the typical jockie kid. I loved PE, doing sports, and hanging out. I really, academically didn’t get turned on by anything until some English courses in college that focused more on writing, which led me to switch my major from PE to Journalism. I went back and made some life changes and ended up going back to get the PE degree.
What life lessons do you believe students can learn from sports and PE? Well, I think, understanding of the role. You don’t always get to be the superstar. You go out and dream about playing basketball, you dream up making the shot and all that sort of thing. And that’s just not always how it works out. And that’s life, you don’t always get the job you want. Our kids go through struggles or medical issues with family members. So understanding that life’s not always going to go our way, and how to respond to it. So I would say understanding your role and overcoming adversity would be the two major ones.
What do you always tell your players to help motivate them? We usually have a slogan for the year that we kind of focus on. So we kind of like to build off that and that’s different from year to year. Whether that’s “stay in the fight”, “Full benefit”, or “Niles North versus everyone.” So we’ve kind of built off of that one main point.
