Who's your all-time team?

In two weeks I will have concluded my 13th season as a football coach. During that span I have worked with 5 different teams and have had the pleasure of coaching several players during this team.  As with other coaches, I've had players of all kinds of ability.  So I was thinking, who are some of the players that I consider the "best" I have coached? Here it is, my list of some of the best players I've ever had the chance to coach by position.

Quarterback: Jeff Donovan--Wauwatosa East High School.

Jeff is and probably will be the best quarterback that I will have the chance to coach.  He was 2 time All-State and Player of the Year in Wisconsin. Jeff would go on to a great career in both football and baseball, winning a National Championship as the starting quarterback at UW-Whitewater.

Running Back: Eric Walton--Kaiserslautern Pikes, German Football League

Eric is my current running back and has been outstanding.  I've only had him for 8 games thus far but I'm comfortable putting him on this list.  In 8 games Eric has accumulated over 2100 yards and 23 TD, which is impressive in any league.  

Wide Receiver: D.J. Cupertino--Wauwatosa East High School

Tosa East was one of my most successful stops.  We had a influx of talent during my 4 years there, including a very good receiving corp my last year.  D.J. was a terrific player, who also played DB for us.  One of my favorite moments from his Senior season was in our opening round playoff game and the team went for a surprise onside kick, only kicked it 8 yards but didn't touch it.  D.J. being both intelligent and sneaky swooped in, picked up the ball and returned to the 2 or 3. To this day D.J. remains one of my favorite players of all time.

Offensive Line: Nico Dohring--Kaiserslautern Pikes, Kai Lehmann--Kaiserslautern Pikes, Ryan Stasinski--Wauwatosa East, Alex Alzade--Wauwatosa East, Greg Kowalski--Milwaukee Pius

Nico and Kai are the two linemen who have helped Eric achieve his great success.  I'm a firm believer that if these guys were placed in a United States youth program both would have gotten scholarships to NCAA schools.  Ryan and Alex were two classes apart both were expected to make an impact.  Alex was part of one of the best Tosa East squads in school history, one that should have went to the State Finals instead of losing in the 1st round of the playoffs.  Ryan anchor another good offensive line 3 years later that ended up being one of the best offensives in school history.  Greg, unfortunately never experienced such team success.  Our teams at Pius were challenging for a variety of reason on and off the field.  The thing about Greg was that he never complained.  He wanted to get better, and he did claiming all-conference honors his senior year.

That's my list.  For the record I've been a offensive guy the vast majority of my 13 seasons.  I have witnessed some really good defensive players during this time as well.  But I'm sure I would miss a guy that should of been on the list.

Another game, another win, promotion

I have not done a very good job of keeping this blog updated.  Since my last entry the World Championships have come and gone (USA, USA, USA!) and the Pikes kept on winning by posting a 28-21 win over rival Mainz.  The win pushed us to 8-0 with two games left.  As I said in my last post, we had already been selected for promotion to the 2^nd Bundesliga.  The decision was made a month ago that the top two teams from our league (Regional Center) would automatically ascend to 2^nd Liga, and thus eliminating the playoff series with the teams from Regional South.  Now to this day I still am not sure why this decision was made or why it was made in the middle of the season.  I’ve heard that teams from the Regional South were not happy with the decision as the 2^nd place team in that league won’t even have a shot at promotion, can’t blame them either.  Personally, I’m happy that we are moving up to the next league but I don’t like the idea that they are bypassing the playoffs this year.  Doesn’t seem fair and if I was on the other side of the fence I would be livid. 

The game versus Mainz was a tough one.  We were coming off another 3 week break and faced probably the most physical defense we will see this year.  It was truly a grind it out victory that included a touchdown pass with about a minute left to break the 21-21 tie.  However, the game shouldn’t have come to that as a late turnover on a mental mistake gave the Golden Eagles the ball at our 22.  They would go on to score and tie the game, setting up our own game winning drive.  Though these types of games aren’t anything I hope for before we start, I think it was good experience for our guys as we prepare for two very big games to finish the year.  I can’t think of a situation we haven’t been through yet as we end the season.  I like where we are at as we head into the season’s last two games against Montabauer and Frankfurt, with the latter going to be for the league championship.  I picked up this saying from another coach I used to work with, "you either get better or you get worse but you never stay the same".  He would always say that when talking to his players about practice habits, but the same holds true in a team concept.  There have been points in this season where we could have "peaked", but we haven't.  Not every game has been pretty, but we have gotten better from game to game in one phase or another. We have also digressed in some areas as well, but overall I think we have improved as a team from game to game.  As coaches that is all we can ask for, and luckily for my team that continual improvement has put us in the position to win our league in two weeks.

USA USA USA!

This post was originally going to be about how our camp was doing in Milwaukee, but due to some technical difficulties (I didn’t get a flight out of Germany) I won’t be able to do that.  So I missed the camp and though I was disappointed I knew that we had some great coaches to make sure the players got a great experience. 

Since my last post we have had one game, which we won 34-17.  It was road game that required a 3.5 hour bus ride.  The one thing that I have learned about my team is that we don’t travel well.  We have had some long road trips and I’ve tried different things, so far I haven’t found the right way yet.   Regardless, we came out on top!  The win clinched our division (which turns out didn’t matter) and remained on top of the overall table (which now does matter).  We also have clinched a spot for promotion to GFL 2.  I will have to write about this in another post, hopefully tomorrow, but it was an anti-climatic experience.  But now to the purpose of today’s post…….the World Cup, well really the World Championships.

As you know (or not) the Women’s World Cup is being played in Germany, but that isn’t what I want to talk about.  Three days from now in two Austrian cities the World Championships of American Football will be played.  This will be the fourth time the World Championships have been played, and the second time the United States has taken part.  The United States are defending champions, defeating Japan 23-20 in double OT in 2007.  That was the U.S. first appearance in World Championships. 

The first World Championship was held in 1999 with Italy as the host nation.  It was a 6 team tournament that was broken up into Group play, and then teams were matched up based on Group Play results.  Japan took the 1^st World Championship with a 6-0 overtime win over Mexico, and then would repeat four years later beating Mexico again in a 4 team tournament held in Germany.  This year’s tournament has expanded to 8 teams with Canada and Austria being first time participants.  They will join the United States, Japan, Australia, Germany, Mexico and France.

Team USA is a roster selected by USA FOOTBALL, the players selected come from various NCAA and NAIA programs in the United States.  Team USA is coached by Mel Tjeerdsma, former Head Coach at Division II Northwest Missouri State. 

Although I don’t know much about the other countries, I would have to imagine that Team USA is the favorite going into the tournament.  They begin Group play on Friday, July 8 against Australia at 9:00 am EST.  They will then play Germany and Mexico before moving on to the Medal Round (hopefully). 

I know in Germany the games can be watched online at Eurosport2.de for about 4 euro, not sure if you can do the same back in the United States.  If you can I would take the opportunity to check out Team USA.    Posted below is a more links that can provide information about the World Championships and USA FOOTBALL. 

History of the World Championships:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFAF_World_Cup

International Federation of American Football: http://www.ifaf.info

American Football World Championships Website: http://www.americanfootball2011.com/en/

USA FOOTBALL:  www.usafootball.com

TEAM USA SCHEDULE

DATE	GAME	TIME
July 8	United States vs. Australia	9:00 a.m. ET
July 10	Germany vs. United States	1:00 p.m. ET
July 12	United States vs. Mexico	1:00 p.m. ET

*Games above will be played in Innsbruck, Austria

2011 IFAF Senior World Championship Medal Round Schedule:

DATE	GAME	TIME
July 15	Bronze Medal Game	1:00 p.m. ET
July 16	Gold Medal Game	1:00 p.m. ET