Sports
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Edited by schultej@grinnell.edu
Athletic department works toward a coach review process that works for both players and coaches By Candace Mettle mettleca@grinnell.edu This year, the Athletic Department piloted a post-season review program to have more opportunities for athletes to evaluate coaches and comment on their athletic experience. After every athlete’s athletic season, they receive an electronic survey to rate their experience. The survey includes questions related to everything from athletic growth under their coach to the emotional support and camaraderie. Athletic Director Andy Hamilton wanted to introduce a post-season review program after attending a conference on administrative athletics. “In my first year [as Athletic Director], I was invited to … national athletics administrative training programs and at one of the training programs one of the segments was evaluation and it was made pretty clear that we needed a tool and fortunately there were several people in the room who offered a tool,” Hamilton said. The post-season review will not be a factor in upcoming review processes and contract renewals because it is not a part of the Dean’s faculty policy. However, Hamilton hopes that this could be the start of long-term evaluation tool. The main review of coaches in the post-season in this past has come from the “captains’ review,” a write-up on the season written by
captains. Athletic coaches undergo the same hiring and review process as academic professors and, depending on their term, have faculty status. The dean’s office, which athletic coaches go through during the review and hiring process, evaluates professors on the quality of their teaching, their scholarship and service. For athletic personnel, the dean’s office and the athletic department follow the same guidelines but include recruitment as a factor for teaching, service and scholarship. The athletic department and the dean’s office consider head coaches as “faculty coaches,” which allow head coaches to teach credited courses. The athletic department initially contracts coaches for three years and reviews the coach in the second year of the term to determine eligibility for contract renewal. If the coach passes, they earn the renewal, and in their fifth year they must undergo a “complete” review. The complete review includes data gathered from captains and SEPC members, input from alumni and current students and a faculty equity advocate involved in every “deliberative” meeting. Passing the complete review process makes an athletic coach eligible for a faculty coach position and/or a longer contract. “Longer contracts allow for fac-
ulty coaches to get through difficult times, to have a longer arch to be able to address or utilize their strengths and address their weakness so I think it’s very beneficial. Faculty coach positions are pretty unique and we feel fortunate to have that opportunity,” Hamilton said. “I think if you look at the whole continuum of how Grinnell creates faculty coach positions, hires, evaluates, it’s a really healthy process and I take real pride in that whole picture.” Head soccer coach Brian Jaworski is hopeful about the review process, as it provides information on how he can improve his coaching. “Anytime you can get feedback, it can be a valuable source of information because so much about coaching is making adjustments from day to day, from week to week, and from year to year. I'll go through the same routine I do every year and that is all for the purpose of being a little bit better every time I step on the field to coach. I certainly don’t see any harm in the post-review program,” Jaworski wrote in an email to The S&B. Student athletes hope that a post-season review will hold coaches and the Athletic Department accountable for conflicts that arise during the season. For example, conflicts arose last fall between some players and Coach Jaworski. Team captains Francisco
Conde-Sanchez, Artis Curiskis and Antonio DiMarco, all ’18, mediated meetings between players, coaches and the Athletic Department. As representatives of students and a liaison between students and staff, they saw their position as one of making compromises and advocating for concerned parties. “I saw genuine attempt by the coaching staff and by most players — not all players — to make changes so that our team could come together as one and have a good season,” DiMarco said. “In the classroom there are expectations as far as behavior goes and at times I think a player can overstep and the coach can overstep but we can come together and come to a solution about that,” Curiskis said. “I think that towards the end of the season, after discussing things with our coach from our perspective, he made pretty drastic attempts to change as seen in his interactions and I think that was a testament to how much he really cares about the players and how much he’s really trying to better the program,” Sanchez-Conde said. Hamilton recommends that, “if a student has a problem with a faculty coach, they work with the faculty coach first. And then we recommend that the student goes to the head of the department. I can meet students re-
garding their concerns; also there are smaller mechanisms such as [Student Athlete Mentors] and team captains. … If the student still has concerns, then a student can go to someone in the dean’s office or student affairs but we try to treat this as if it’s an academic concern when possible.” Some players did leave the team, though, and have decided to remain off the team until they believe that more accountability is in place. As of now, Jaworski will keep his faculty coach position. Hamilton and Jaworski hope that they can move forward and make improvements where they need to be. “The chair of the department needs to provide the coach to operate and in these circumstances. … My job as the chair is to communicate with the faculty coach and I’ve been processing that way. … There’s internal work with the coach and the team and that is probably the place where work needs to occur,” Hamilton said. “I stand by my approach to coaching as a soccer coach and golf coach. No coach is a perfect coach and no player is a perfect player, but I am extremely proud of the men's soccer program we have built here at Grinnell. I'm confident that myself and all the players learned a lot this past season and my sense is we will be a more experienced, close-knit group,” Jaworski said.
First-years stand out in track & field meet at Emory
By Quan Tran tranminh2@grinnell.edu
Over spring break, the men’s and women’s track and field teams spent a week training and competing in Florida and Georgia, with a goal to get as many training sessions in as possible. At the end of the week, they traveled to Atlanta to compete in the Emory Classic at Emory University. After spending a week doing grueling workouts in the heat, their performances exceeded expectations. “We really enjoyed competing in warm weather because it’s been a little challenging here [at Grinnell]. We were able to work on specific outdoor events that we don’t do. That being said, having gone through a week of pretty hard training we don’t go to the meet expecting to perform at our best, but we had some pretty good results here and there at the end,” said head
women’s track and field coach Evelyn Freeman. Different from typical track and field meets, the Emory Classic has a wider range of competitors, most of whom the Pioneers have never heard of or competed against before. The event consists of community colleges in the nearby area, along with Division II and III programs, as well as any other schools that happened to be around at the time. With such diverse levels of competition, both the men’s and women’s team managed to produce outstanding performances, especially from first-years Lucas Chamberland and Agne Lukoseviciute. On the opening Friday of Emory Classic, Chamberland placed second in the 10,000-meter run, clocking a 34:26.01, and it was the first time he’d ever run a 10k. He sees such a successful event this early in his student-athlete career as a confirmation
of his ability and a personal motivation for future improvements, especially for the upcoming outdoor championships. “As it was my first 10k ever, I was quite satisfied with my time. It’s always great to be able to get points for the team. I wanted to run under 35 minutes, and I achieved that. I’m looking to improve more for the Midwest Conference meet though,” Chamberland wrote in an email to The S&B. “10k is not something that you run frequently during the season because it’s pretty long. So to get one in great weather conditions was a nice advantage for him. [Overall], we were pretty happy with the results and I think he was pretty happy too,” Freeman added. On the women’s team, on Friday, Agne Lukoseviciute finished 14th in the hammer toss event with a toss of 119-10, which is fourth-best in school
history. In a similar vein to Chamberland’s success, this was the first hammer throw competition for Lukoseviciute. Then, on Saturday, she outdid herself by placing seventh in discus toss with a personal record best of 126-1. This put her third in the event in school history and was the best performance the Pioneers have seen for more than a decade. Even Freeman, who knows about Lukoseviciute’s prowess in the discus, was surprised at by the success. “We knew she was talented, and discus had always been her strong suit in high school, but we didn’t expect her to perform this well this early in the season. She did a fabulous job,” Freeman said. Lukoseviciute, on the other hand, keeps herself to a humble tone when speaking about her accomplishments. “I’m happy about it, and my coach is
especially excited at the hammer toss. Coming to the event, I was just hoping to improve on my high school records in discus and try my best at the hammer,” she said. Looking past the feat last weekend, both first-years know they have more room to improve in order to be in the best shape possible for the remainder of the season. Chamberland has had his eye set on beating the 33:30 mark in the 10k, while Lukoseviciute is aiming to extend her discus to 40 meters. With the two talents as spearheads for the freshman class, Freeman is very optimistic about their future. “We’re delighted when people start out their first season of competition on a fairly high note. It just makes us all feel like there’s even greater potential for improvement. … We hope [they get] better and better [with] the more opportunities they have.”
Thoughts on a new pro baseball season
Last weekend marked the beginning of a new Major League Baseball season. Grinnell students share what they hope to see out of the 2018 season. The S&B's Vera Kahn and photographer Mai Phuong Vu went to the Spencer Grill and Laurel Leaf Lounge to find out about how people feel about this season.
Pictured L-R: Alice Herman ’18, Candace Mettle ’19, Nate Williams ’20
Jack Lunn ’20 on opening day: “I'm a White Sox fan and we scored 14 runs and we won, so that's cool.”
Herman: “I know there's gonna be some big wins” Williams: “Apparently the MLB app, one of the software developers put bitcoin mining software into the app and the millions of people who had the app downloaded to their phones were quickly losing.”
Harry Gale ’20: “I think [the Yankees] are gonna have like three games in the regular season against the Red Sox instead of two, which is a little more fun. Maybe I'll be home this summer to watch some. The thing with baseball is when you watch it it's really slow, so you miss a lot of stuff, but it's a very fun atmosphere. People do the wave, peanuts and beer, so that's what I'm looking forward to.”
Looking forward to: “The White Sox have a really young team, so we're not really supposed to win a lot of games this year, but seeing a lot of younger guys develop as players.”
Sam Bilsky ’20 and Ian Donaldson ’20 on the Washington Nationals this season: Ian: “Playoffs, out first round.” Sam: “I think they'll make it to the second round of the playoffs, but D.C. could never win a championship. It's never gonna happen.”