Last season coaching basketball....

Coaching has been one of my favorite aspects of teaching high school. This was my third season coaching at Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy. I'll give you a brief recap of each season.

First Season 2008 - 2009
This was my first year coaching. How did I become the girls' basketball coach? The Athletic Director came to me at the start of the year and said, "You're tall. Do you play basketball?" After my emphatic "yes!" he asked if I wanted to coach. It's always been my dream to coach high school basketball so I immediately accepted. Maeser Prep is a charter school so this season we played in the charter school league with 6 different teams. We did pretty well, considering my girls didn't even know how to jump stop let alone dribble or shoot. I mean they looked like 3rd graders learning how to play the game. We drilled fundamentals over and over in practice. By the end of the season they actually looked like a basketball team. They made HUGE improvement. I wish I had the film to prove it. Our win/loss record was 8/4 for the season and 10/6 including tournament. We ended up with 3rd place. Not too bad. Our first game in the tournament was against Paradigm High School. Going in to the tourney we had each won twice against each other. This was it, the tie breaker. Well, we ended up losing by 2 points in DOUBLE overtime. It was a really good game, one of the best I've coached. Because the tourney was double elimination, we won our next two and then we met up with Paradigm again in the semi-finals. Unfortunately we lost to them again. They were our best competition. This was a challenging year with teaching the girls the fundamentals and practicing at the American Fork Armory. It's HARD not having your own gym. But it turned out well!

Second Season 2009 - 2010
This year, Maeser Prep left the charter school league and stepped up into the big leagues. We officially because part of the Utah High School Activities Association as a 2A school. It was a good move to become more officially recognized in the sports world, but also knowing that we were going to get crushed by public schools who have been playing for years and years with great sports programs was a little daunting.

I started the year out coaching the volleyball team. The biggest challenges I dealt with were teaching the girls how to serve overhand (the coach before me didn't teach this) and teaching them to get the ball, no matter what. They were a little timid and if the ball was in someone else's area, they wouldn't even worry about it or step in and take it. Even though we didn't win any games, we DID get to go to State (2A tournament) at UVU and our biggest accomplishment was our improvement on the court. We even had an Academic All-State.

Baksetball. Again, no gym this year. Because the American Fork Armory was undergoing rennovation, we traded off practicing at Pleasant Grove Jr. High and an elementary school out in Alpine - the court was crap. We'll take what we can get though. This year our basketball skills were much better and we had tremendous improvement, again. Our win/loss record shows otherwise, but building up a program takes time. Our Athletic Director failed to schedule any pre-season games for us and was thus replaced. I lost my best player (point guard and top scorer) to an ACL injury before our first game. That took her out for the rest of the season. She hasn't been the same since either. Although, we didn't make it to State, we did have an Academic All-State.

This year for both volleyball and basketball I coached the Freshmen and Varsity teams. I would have done JV as well, but the UHSAA didn't grant us permission for a JV team since we didn't yet have our own gym. This was the first year I actually had an assistant coach too.

Third Season 2010 - 2011
What a season! We finally put a few wins on the board! I stepped down as Head Coach this year due to time constraints with other responsibilities (applying to PA school and finishing up my Master's in Education). Thus I coached JV and assisted with both Varsity and Freshmen. We finally had 3 different coaches for the 3 teams. It made a world of difference too. The Varsity Head Coach is fabulous too. She played ball in college and has a lot to bring to the table. The JV team's win/loss record is a little better than Varsity's win/loss record. We came away with 4 or 5 wins. And you can see the schedule is much better stacked than last year's. I had to schedule all the pre-season games myself considering the situation last year. The best part of this season was that we FINALLY had our own gym! Fans actually showed up to cheer us on. This has been our best year yet. Yes, it's nice to win. Everybody wants to win. But this season we focused a lot more on individual focus and improvement. We really did have a successful season, but not based on our season record. We found something worthy to achieve for and achieve it we did. Each player made huge strides in their individual performance. Next year.....look out!

Our program is continuing to improve, slowly, but surely. In the next few years we will be competitive enough to finally give some of these teams a run for their money. I'm sad I will no longer be a part of it, but you better bet I'll still be supporting my team.

Here's my siblings and I after our last JV win of the season. They are all sportin' their Maeser gear to show their support. Good luck in the future Maeser!

3rd Annual Maeser Faculty vs. Student Basketball Game

This is my favorite thing each year at Maeser. This is always something to look forward to and I love talking smack to the students. This year it was even better since we actually had our own gym to play in, which meant...........stands packed FULL of students, both middle and high school. Us ladies played the 1st and 3rd quarters with the men playing the 2nd and 4th quarters. And who won....? TEACHERS!! Booyah! This is the first year we've won too. There were some pretty impressive plays by the teachers. Not so much by the students...... haha!

Birthdays

I had an awesome birthday this year. We had a family party the Sunday before since it was also my bro-in-law's birthday to celebrate the both of us. Sweet.

Monday I had another joint birthday party with another dude in the ward, just friends this time. The candles on my cake said OLD. The candles on Shane's cake said OLDER :)

Tuesday was my actual birthday and all my students sang to me in almost every class plus my sweet sis brought me balloons and my addiction to make it though the day - sugar! To top it off, my basketball team WON their game!! They tore it up against Waterford. Thanks for coming to support, Family!

Are you serious??!!

Check it out!! My Varsity girls' basketball team FINALLY WON!! (please click). How the heck did they even score that many points? I missed it too unfortunately.......I was in Connecticut for an interview.

Week of Surprises

This past week has been an amazing one for me! I feel so honored to have received the following awards.

Coach of the Year. At our annual Sports Banquet I was honored for coaching the Varisty and Sophomore teams for both Volleyball and Basketball this year. It was a great opportunity for me and I loved every minute of it even if it was lots of practices and traveling. These girls are amazing! I got this nifty plaque for it.

Teacher of the Year. I was surprised with this award recieved today at Graduation, being honored for teaching 4 preps, being the department head, working on the accreditation committee, coaching volleyball and basketball, working on my Masters, planning a trip to Spain next summer for my students, being amazing, respected, and organized (as my fellow faculty members put it). My name will go on a plaque in the entrance at the school.

Wow! That's all I've got to say! Thank you so much everyone for your support this year! It has been one crazy year, but one crazy good year.

Thursday was the Groundbreaking Ceremony for our new school building. And I actually got to break ground! I held a fancy gold shovel and threw some dirt around. Unfortunately there were no more hard hats to wear, but it was great to be a part of it.

This morning was the last day of school. We had yearbook signing in the morning and a lovely graduation ceremony in the afternoon. I got the BYU Spanish department to donate a few books to give out as awards at graduation and I had the fortunate opportunity to present them myself.

So during yearbook signing the teachers were supposed to check off lockers of students and make sure they were clean. So this kid comes up to me and asks if I can check off his locker. So I follow him and he says it's number 208. I open it to take a gander inside and to my complete surprise and shock there's a student in there! He scared the crap out of me! Bahahahaha! Funny thing is he did the exact same thing to me last year! Oh boy, I love these kids. I'm going to miss them....

Shout Out to my Bro. In Law!

Erik Loño. Probably my biggest fan! I think he's my only faithful reader and always asks when I'm going to post next. You can thank him.....he keeps me posting. He is an AMAZING artist and web designer. He's done a number of websites, but has also designed shirts, soccer shoes, etc. Take a gander at his website, where you can connect to all his work. A very talented dude! He also designed both my volleyball and basketball team shirts. Everyone loved them. The boys basketball team was super jealous :) Thanks Erik!

Basketball Recap

Coaching season ended for me this past Thursday. Hallelujah! No, I'm sad really but it's also going to be so nice to have a break. I've been coaching for the last 7 months straight and I'm worn out! Sadly, my Varsity team didn't come away with any wins, BUT they did improve tremenduously over the season. If you're interested in our scores, check out Deseret News. And just keep in mind that my team is all Freshmen/Sophomores (except for 1 Senior & 1 Junior) playing against all Junior/Senior teams. So next year and the year after we will ROCK!! Also note that on the scores, the second time we played each team, we lost by less than the first time we played them (except the last game against South Summit). Maybe that's a sad way to look at it, but at least it shows improvement. It was a good season and at least we had some moral victories! And my Freshmen team won 1 game. Yay!

Both the boys and girls teams did the half-time show for the Flash game (minor league for the Jazz) a few weeks ago. We had a 3 point shooting contest and since a lot of my girls can't shoot that far (sad, I know....) I got to shoot. It was sweet! I swished one, bricked a few, and air-balled one. Man....... embarrassing! No, it was a lot of fun though!

Basketball Preview

Well I went straight into basketball from volleyball..........no break. We are now 3 and 1/2 weeks in and we are looking pretty good. I was actually really surprised to see the girls from the team last year - they have some mad skills!! They must have actually learned something last year :) We made huge strides last year and I'm expecting the same this year.

Except I've been extremely frustrated thus far. I've already had 4 girls quit on me in the last 2 weeks. Man, am I really that tough? :) No, some situations have come up that merit immediate attention that wouldn't be very likely if they continued with the team. BUT on the other hand, they could do it if they wanted to. They're just not dedicated. That's a struggle with these students at a charter school. A lot of them have never played sports before so they don't know how it works. Well, I'll tell you what! I'll change that right away! I'm mostly upset about my star senior post player. We were going to be AMAZING with her........Now, it's going to take a lot of work but we can still do it.

So I went from 20 girls to 16 for two teams. I'm going to play about five girls on both teams. Good news for them! :) No, but I expect our season to be a lot more successful than our volleyball season. Our region will still be tough but these girls are some real ballers. Our first game isn't until December 11th. I'll keep you posted!

To State!!!

My volleyball team got to go to State this year, our first year in the UHSAA 2A State Tournament. Yeah! Our season ended 1 - 10, but in my defense we had the hardest region in the state. 3 of the other 5 teams took 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the State Tournament. They played hard and they really progressed throughout the season. My best player is unfortunately graduating this year. She was a fantastic player & a great leader.

Our State Tournament was at UVU with 4 courts set up all at the same time. I think my girls got a little intimidated. They've never played any where close to that. Shoot, we don't even have our own gym yet! It was great experience for them for next year though. We lost our first game then we almost won our second game, in fact we totally could have! That was the frustrating part. They have had communication & hesitation issues all season and we've worked on it so much. Anyway, I'm happy with our progress (we closed the gap, point-wise, every time we played the same team) and glad we got to go to State. It was a good season. You can see me here at the State Tournament tossing the balls for warm-up :)

Volleyball Season

This year I was asked to coach volleyball as well since I did so well with the basketball girls last year. I thought it would be fun to do since I love coaching and also volleyball (BUT not as much as basketball!). Let me tell you what.....it's been a challenge thus far in many different respects. Time being the first one. With teaching and also working on my Masters there is not much free time. I have practices every MWF with games on TTh. It's a full schedule!

Last year we were in the Charter School league and so for basketball we only had games on Fridays with practice twice a week, three if we were lucky. It was ideal for my schedule. But this year we are in the official high school sports program, UHSAA, for Utah and are a 2A school. All the schools we play are between 1-2 hours away. We also have to pick up another school (about 45 min. away) and take them to all of the games with us. They are our JV team since we only have a Freshman and Varsity team, which I am the head coach for both. Talk about intense! Because we play schools with girls that have been playing since 6th grade or before we have been losing pretty badly. Most of my girls have never been on an organized team before. They are just happy playing, but I really want to win!

To top it all off, we don't have our own gym yet (coming next year....) so we practice at the American Fork Armory ("this ain't the armory!") which doesn't have any volleyball lines marked and the floor is super slippery. Not ideal in any way.

BUT I am really enjoying it and having fun. People told me I was crazy to coach both volleyball AND basketball and now I am starting to understand why.......I'm exhausted! I love it though!

Maeser Faculty vs. Students Basketball Game

Today after school we had a little basketball competition between faculty and students. It rocked. The women faculty played against the girls basketball team and the men faculty played against the boys basketball team - 2 quarters for each gender to make a full game.

It was a little rough for my team because none of the faculty members really wanted to play. We only had 5 people, barely, and only two of us really actually play basketball. I was proud of the other three, though. They came out to show school spirit and really did a good job!

There was a lot of trash talkin' going on between teachers and students. Hahaha! Unfortunately, the teachers lost to the both the boys and girls basketball teams. The boys won by a little over 10 points, but the girls only won by 4 points (Final Score: 22 - 26). I gave 'em a tough game! Hehehe. I scored maybe about 15 points or so. It was a blast.....I LOVE playing basketball and therefore really loved coaching this year.

Basketball Awards Dinner

This is my girls basketball team - Kayleigh, Eryn, Abby, Kenna, Ashlyn, Alex, Tamela, McCall, and Adriee. Not pictured: Robyn, Morgan, Maria

To end our successful season, one of the moms put together a dinner for the players & parents to celebrate. She did an amazing job and even made a super rad cake with all the players' names on it. I gave out awards to each girl, as well as a rose. Then I got the "Best Coach Award" from my players and several gifts. Aaaaaaah.....

I miss basketball TONS and the fun we all had together. Can't wait for next year!

My First Trophy as COACH

Last weekend was the final tournament to end our basketball season. We took 3rd place!! I was hoping to do better and we could have taken 2nd place or even 1st, but it pretty much all came down to luck.....

The tournament was double elimination. We played our biggest rival right off, Paradigm (the bracket was totally messed up). During the season they beat us twice and we beat them twice. This was the most exciting game that I'll probably ever get to coach. It went into DOUBLE overtime and.... we barely lost 26 -24. The crowd was going wild too.

So we fell into the losers bracket and easily won the next two games, Provo Canyon School 30 - 11 and Merit 52 - 29. It was nice because as a coach I was able to play my 2nd and 3rd stringers tons and give them more playing time. It was a brutal tournament schedule though, because the 3 games I just told you about were played straight in a row. My girls didn't even get a 10 minute break! Man....

The next day, Saturday, we had an 8 am game against Paradigm.....again! This was also a really good game. It went back and forth the whole time, but we just couldn't do it. We lost to them again 43 - 40. I'll tell you what, we are two really evenly matched teams! I love playing them for that reason. Basically either of us could have won both of those games (the first one & this one), but we just weren't lucky I guess.

My girls were disappointed to lose to them again, but I think they were happy with where we ended up. They played AMAZING!!! If you could have seen these girls at the beginning of the season and then see them now, you'd see a difference of night and day. They have improved sooo much. I'm proud of the progress they've made, both individually and as a team. I'm already looking forward to next year!

This trophy is proudly on display in my classroom. Pretty big for 3rd place, eh? Oh, and next year I'll be coaching volleyball as well. They asked me just the other day. Should be exciting!!

Look at that teamwork!!

TRIUMFANT!!!!!

My last game of the season was a little scaaaary..... but we did it! We WON!! I say scary because this team really wasn't that good, but we only won by 7 points. We shot a million baskets, but nothing was going in. I was getting so frustrated!! We really should have won by at least 20 points.

Our record now stands 7 and 4 (won 7 that is), which I must say we lost all of our games at the beginning the season minus one team who was and is undefeated. We have made HUGE progress. I'm happy with their success.

Tournament is in 2 short weeks and I anticipate the trophy in our hands. Cheer us on!!! We will be going in as #2 or 3 seed. We are going to ROCK it!

Winning Streak

My girls basketball team is doing soooooo good! They have improved TONS! In fact, they are currently on a winning streak. We've played 7 games - they lost the first 3 and they've won the last 4. They haven't just won.....they've killed the opponent! I couldn't be a prouder coach! Hopefully they keep it up and continue to play well and have good teamwork. The next game will tell. We play Paradigm, which we've already lost to twice, so we'll just see how good these girls are....they better beat 'em! That's all I've got to say!

So I LOVE coaching! It's fun and rewarding, not to mention a good way to unwind and de-stress after teaching all day. The girls are amazing and so fun to be around. We have games once a week - every Friday - which pretty much blows my Friday nights, but there's no where I'd rather be! It's fun to watch the boys play as well. We usually play one right after the other.

Some of my girls think it's their mission to set me up with one of the refs at every game. It's kinda funny. Last game they were taking pictures of me on their cell phones any time the ref even got close to me (I was keeping score for the boys' game). Haha. You know how those high school kids can be..........!!!

We Won our First Game!!!!

Not only did we win, but we killed the opposing team! I'm so proud of my girls! We played our fourth game today. They played extremely well and I was pleasantly surprised.

Ok, so sometimes I make my girls run in practice for certain things. How much they run depends on them....the more shots they make, the less they have to run. So......one of the girls came up with the idea of having me run. Her idea was if they win, then I have to run the number of laps that they win by. So I agreed to this to give them a little more incentive to win.

So we won today, right? The score was 53 to 20. Which means I have 33 laps to run (laps = baseline to opposing full court baseline). That's going to be a killer!!! Hahaha! It's pretty funny though. I never expected them to win by that much! Wish me luck.........

First Basketball Game

Yesterday was our first basketball game of the season and my first game to coach. In honor of the big event, my lovely roommate Allison made me a basketball pumpkin pie! Check out how cool that is!

So the big game was in Price, UT about a 2 hour bus drive each way. Every Friday I will have a game with us playing first and the boys after us. Compared to us, the boys are way better. We lost our game last night 53 to 22.....they didn't play very well. We have lots of work to do! I wish that we had been able to start practicing much earlier. Plus, we only have practice for an hour and a half 3 days a week.....not much. I'll take what I can though. I'm really loving it!

Coach Anderson

Yep, that's me! Last week I started coaching the girls basketball team for our high school. I've never coached before, but it's something I've always wanted to do so I'm super excited. We already have games in a couple of weeks. There's a few challenges that I need to overcome - these girls have no fundamentals, only a few have played competitively, there's not enough balls for every girl, and we only have practice 2-3 times a week. That's the downside to working for a brand new up and going charter school I guess. I'm looking forward to a great season and I'll keep you updated from time to time. I love it so far! If you have coached before and/or have any suggestions, please let me know!