The Three Imperatives
Summary
Assessment is not only an imperative piece in classroom instruction but is a critical piece in evaluating where an athlete is and where an athlete needs to go. Coaches need to develop and utilize clear strategies for assessing athletes during training, practices, development and game performances. This not only directs the coach in developing practice plans and individualized athlete goals, but clarifies the questions of why athletes are awarded team designations (JV or Varsity) and playing time. Utilizing this rubric will “peel back the curtain” for our athletes to understanding the why and how certain skill performances can move them forward in their athletic development. I am putting two rubrics together in this exercise. The first is a simple procedural rubric that will be posted in many places in our athletic areas (gyms, locker rooms, fields and weight room). This graphic will be a constant visual reminder that student-athletes can reference to self-assess and promote reflection of their own performance. The second and the bulk is a performance rubric coaches can utilize and keep on file for athlete meetings preseason, in season and post season to clearly show athletes and possibly parents where they are in accordance to team goals and philosophies.
Standards and Objectives
National Standards for Sport Coaching Assessment
Standard 34: Implement appropriate strategies for evaluating athlete training, development and performance.
CWBAT: Assess student-athlete progress and performance to assist in decision making about the athlete.
CWBAT: Use proven strategies and tools to make decisions on athlete selection, team role, goal setting, training.
Standard 35: Engage athletes in a process of continuous self-assessment and reflection to foster responsibility for their own learning and development.
CWBAT: Provide their student-athletes tools to evaluate and encourage their own progress in sport.
CWBAT: Teach student athletes to self-assess and grow decision-making in their own development in the sport.
SLO Checklist
Baseline and Trend Data
This “course” will be a required one-day professional development for all ten varsity head coaches at the high school level and all seven head coaches at the middle school level. Assistant coaches regardless of school and level will be invited by attendance will not be required. This will be the first professional development of its kind within our district. Our coaching staff will likely have no formal training on evaluating student-athletes with a rubric and have no clear strategies for using proven research-based evaluation methods for athletic performance in regard to training, practices and game performance. During post season survey’s and interviews with coaches five questions were directed towards student-athlete evaluation.
Q1: Do you have a quantifiable system in place for athlete evaluation?
Q2: Are your results of your athletic evaluation shared with the athlete?
Q3: Do you provide feedback for improvement from your evaluations?
Q4: Are records are kept on athlete evaluations?
Q5: Are you consistent with athlete evaluations from player to player?
Results of these questions were alarming. Prompting me to develop a professional development in how we can consistently evaluate and monitor student-athlete performance across the district for all athletic programs and make it quantifiable to eliminate speculation of favoritism among coaches and athletes, provide feedback on performance rather than statistics and keep data on athletes for potential growth and parent interventions.
Baseline Results of Questions
Question Results Percentage
Q1 Yes-3 17.6%
No-14 82.4%
Q2 Yes-1 5.9%
No-16 94.1%
Q3 Yes-7 41.2%
No-10 58.8%
Q4 Yes-1 5.9%
No-16 94.1%
Q5 Yes-17 100%
No-0 0%
These questions were asked for the first time this year in coaches post season evaluations. A measurable evaluation was administered for each coach in the past three seasons in regard to:
Administrative Responsibilities=28 pts. Possible
Relationships=36 pts. Possible
Coaching Performance=40 pts. Possible
Total=104 pts. Possible
3-year Trend Data
(Averages across all head coaches)
(Each year was a new A.D. evaluating coaches on a limited system)
Area 2017-2018 2018-2019 2019-2020
Administrative 24 B Rating 21 C Rating 26 A- Rating
Relationships 30 B Rating 29 B- Rating 31 B Rating
Performance 34 B Rating 27 D Rating 33 B- Rating
Total 88 B Rating 77 C Rating 90 B+ Rating
Baseline data to the suggested SLO is more accurate than the 3-year trend data. It is relative to the specific standard of student-athlete assessment. It is alarming that the high percentages of coaches (83%) do not have quantifiable measures for student athletes and the two feedback questions have staggering rates (94% and 59%) of non-transparency to help student-athletes improve and grow from feedback. It is the aim of the professional development to improve strategies of evaluation of athletes in all phase’s pre-season, in-season and post-season and rubrics to encourage feedback for athletic growth and consistency.
Summary of Analysis
As I began to prepare for this professional development taking into consideration many of the suggestions and needs for my coaches from 2019-2020 evaluations and feedback. Coaches really wanted to limit the number of parent contacts in regard to playing time and team designation management decisions. Many of these parent contacts moved up the chain of command into my office as parents questioned why their student-athlete was put on junior varsity or why they received fewer minutes of playing time. I really had to act as nothing more than a mediator in meetings as coaches had no concrete evidence to show why players were evaluated and didn’t start, were put on sub-varsity teams and got fewer minutes. You could see coaches trying to articulate the reasoning to the parent’s dismay. Many meetings ended with differences of opinions, hurt feelings and no means to an end. This always puts coaches as well as their athletes “in-between that old rock and the hard place.” Where do they go from there? This led me to developing this professional development on High Performance Student-Athlete Evaluations. Using rubrics and quantitative measures to evaluate athletes. As the professional development is designed, we as coaches talked about why it is important to use rubrics and numbers in the evaluation process and define concrete numbers on what they are looking for at each stage of an athlete’s development. Coaches seemed to be really opened to the idea as it will help them with player meetings, player goal setting and the parent meetings. They also liked the fact that they could show a player their growth from week to week and season to season. Making the professional development interactive and working through a live training session, practice film and game film really got coaches on the same staffs and across the board talking in terms of what they need to see out of athletes. It was surprising to me how close we all were in using the standard rubric when evaluating our athletes. We then discussed about how we would let the athletes themselves self-evaluate on the rubric. The general consensus was the athletes would be far harder on themselves then we could ever be as their coaches. Coach Scott Andrews stated, “that is a good thing, as it opens up real dialogue between athlete and coach.”
Growth Targets for 2021
Q1: Do you have a quantifiable system in place for athlete evaluation?
Q2: Are your results of your athletic evaluation shared with the athlete?
Q3: Do you provide feedback for improvement from your evaluations?
Q4: Are records are kept on athlete evaluations?
Q5: Are you consistent with athlete evaluations from player to player?
Question Percentage in the Yes
Q1 100%
Q2 90%
Q3 90%
Q4 95%
Q5 75%
Actual Growth for 2021
Q1: Do you have a quantifiable system in place for athlete evaluation?
Q2: Are your results of your athletic evaluation shared with the athlete?
Q3: Do you provide feedback for improvement from your evaluations?
Q4: Are records are kept on athlete evaluations?
Q5: Are you consistent with athlete evaluations from player to player?
Question Percentage in the Yes
Q1 80%
Q2 60%
Q3 55%
Q4 50%
Q5 85%
Parent to Coach and Parent to Athletic Director Meetings
This is a snapshot of the data collected between 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, interactions with scheduled parent meetings with coaches and parent meetings needing to climb the chain of command to the athletic director. I feel the use of data driven athletic player evaluations will limit the number of contacts parents will have with going above the coaching level on our grievance chain of command. The data has shown that while parent meetings to coaches have slightly decreased (20%), the escalation of parent meetings to the athletic director decreased greatly (75%). I feel that reduction of parent to coach meetings is due to the transparency of coaches to athletes in the evaluation process. Athletes can better inform parents to why coaching decisions are made and have data driven evidence to back them up. The drastic decrease in parent to athletic director meetings is due to stopping the complaint of playing time at the coach level with statistical data to the parents. Below is a chart and graph to illustrate the number of parent contacts to the coach and parent contacts to the athletic director with a comparison from the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years.
