Use Your School's Physical Education Program as the Mother-Lode For Building Your Sports Programs

written by Bill Utsey, Director of Athletics, Greenville County Schools, Greenville SC

Interscholastic sports coaches all want to win. We all want to have the best team, the best players, and have our team compete for regional or state championship. One of the best ways to do this is to use your school's physical education program to identify and recruit athletically talented students.

Over the years, in my role as athletic director for a very large school district with multiple schools, I've witnessed every level of athletic performance in all the sports we offer. Invariably, when I speak to those coaches with poor performance records they lament about the lack of talent in their school (e.g. "We are in a down cycle for athletes"), the "bad attitude" of their players, or the lack of desire among their students to play sports.” But when asked about what they are doing to get students out for their sports, these coaches give vague responses and rarely share with me any specific strategies they are using to find, recruit, or develop their talent base.

I've learned that finding athletic talent is easier than one thinks. All coaches need to do is to engage with their school’s physical education program. It's a wonderful resource for recruiting athletic talent into the different sports. I like to remind coaches of this axiom, "The best team in the state walks the halls of every school in the state!" Although the public looks at wins and losses, I’m convinced that the best and ultimate measure of success in any extracurricular endeavor - be it sports, drama, or music - is the number of students wanting to participate and be a part of the program ("If they are knocking your door down to be a part of your program, you must be doing something right.").

Athletic talent can be found right around the corner and especially in your physical education classes. Because every student in school passes through the school’s physical education program, your PE program is the mother-lode for finding and recruiting athletic talent in your school. As a physical education teacher and coach I discovered I was in the best position to seek out and find every talented athlete in our school. When I coached, I seized every opportunity I could to take advantage of my positions as both the physical education teacher and the school’s football, basketball, and track coach to find talented athletes.

Years ago, my physical education professors at The Citadel, my alma mater taught us the most basic of coaching skills - how to assess and evaluate physical fitness. We were taught there were eleven fitness items and each of them played an important role in athletic aptitude. When my coaching career began, I relied heavily upon testing athletic ability with strength, speed, and jumping assessments. My Citadel physical education professors taught us that the vertical jump test had the highest correlation with athletic aptitude. With this in mind, it was the vertical jump test that I relied on the most in assessing ability (Note: one can also use the standing long jump as it correlates highly with the vertical jump test).

Above all though, I used my physical education classes as my number one recruiting base for our athletic teams. If I found a student who scored exceptionally well in test items that directly related to a sport, I always encouraged them to go out for the team. If they scored well on cardiovascular measures (I used the 12 minute run-walk test…today you may use the pacer test), I encouraged them to run track and cross country. If they scored well on the vertical jump (or standing long jump), I encourage them to play just about any sport (from football to volleyball to sprinting/jumping in track and field). Smart coaches seek out young students with better than average fitness scores in their school's physical education program. If they're not already playing sports, I recommend that you personally invite them to come out, join a team, have some fun, and learn about life at the same time.

Today, virtually all physical education programs use the FitnessGram for assessing general physical fitness within their programs. The FitnessGram is the national standard for assessing fitness. Aerobic capacity, muscular strength, endurance, and flexibility are all assessed with the individual items of the FitnessGram. These test items can give coaches of all sports indicators on each student’s capability to perform well in sports. If you want to find athletic talent, I encourage you to access the FitnessGram results, analyze the data, then recruit those students whose test scores indicate aptitude in your sport.

If you are also the school's physical education teacher, in addition to FitnessGram test results consider also measuring other fitness test items (such as the vertical jump, standing long jump, or even a speed/acceleration test such as the 40 or 120 yard dash). The vertical jump (or standing long jump) test takes very little time and is relatively easy to administer. Getting every student in the physical education program tested in this item can give you valuable information on the athletic aptitude of every student in your school.

Another great test item to consider using is the 40-yard dash. This is a universally accepted test for speed, although really it's more of a measure of explosive power, acceleration, and quickness. What makes this test a great test is its ease of administration. The National Association of Speed and Explosion (NASE) touts the 120-yard dash as the single best test for team sports athletes. It gives the coach seven key scores and measures acceleration, stride length, stride frequency, speed endurance, and sprint speed. Because it takes at least five people to test each athlete this makes for a difficult administration but the benefit for the coach is that more data can be gathered and analyzed.

Another test that can be used to measure athletic aptitude is the Overhead Deep Squat Test (ODS). The ODS test item is an outgrowth of the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) presently being used universally around the world to test functional movement capacity and core strength. The ODS is only one of the seven items on the Functional Movement Screen, but it has the highest carryover relationship to the other six FMS test items because it taxes virtually all of the core muscles and all the major body joints - ankle, knee, hip, spine, and shoulder girdle.

Mike Srock, renowned high school strength coach (Byrnes HS, Duncan SC), believes that any young athlete who can do a ODS correctly while keeping the feet and heels flat on the ground has a high propensity for athletic aptitude and performance. You can test this belief by following the ODS link above. Learn how to assess and score the ODS first by trying it yourself. You will quickly see how this exercise taxes the core muscles and the joints of the ankle, knee, hip, spine, and shoulder. Once you’ve learned the ODS, consider administering it to all of your prospective athletes.

In summary, if you want to find talented athletes use physical fitness test data. There's a high correlation between fitness test scores and athletic aptitude and ability. If you recruit high scoring students into your program you’ll build your talent base and see performance improvements. Personally, if I were beginning my coaching career all over again, the vertical jump or standing long jump along with the overhead deep squat would probably be the two main tests I would use to measure both athletic aptitude and conditioning improvement. As a physical education teacher and coach, I would also be testing every student not just on the FitnessGram, but also on the ODS and vertical jump.

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