July 22, 2011 at 5:47 p.m.
Summer not off for athletes
Coaches careful on how they use their contact days
Summer not off for athletes
By Jonathan Bailey-
For many athletes, however, summer is a time to improve their skills whether it be in the gym or on the field.
Rhinelander student-athletes have been gathering together with their teammates since the 2010-11 school year concluded, something that will continue until school begins again Sept. 1.
According to Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) rules, athletes are able to "assemble in any manner they wish" during that timespan.
Coaches, however, have much stricter regulations, and are frequently relegated to being little more than a spectator with a notebook.
They are allowed no more than five contact days between the time period of the final day of school and July 31. How they decide to use them varies greatly on a sport-to-sport basis.
Anita Mattek, the head coach of the girls' basketball team, and Derek Lemmens, the boys' basketball coach, used a couple of their contact days shortly after the release of school to set up training and workout programs.
Mattek elected to utilize the first two possible days, hoping to establish a similar blueprint that helped her team go from 0-21 in 2009-10 to 13-12 this past season, and win a playoff game against Mosinee.
"I used (the days) to teach them how to workout and what I want them to do," Mattek said. "Seniors (schedule our work outs) three times a week and during the contact days I showed them what drills I want them to do."
After using the two contact days early on and wanting to save her others for later in the year, Mattek became just a spectator as her team practiced for the better part of the next month. She used contact days the past two Wednesdays and will wrap up her allotment today when her team travels to Medford for a summer game.
On June, 16, Lemmens got back in contact with his players for the first time since early March. The renovation of the high school gymnasium altered how he would prefer to use the days.
"This year didn't work out as perfect as I wanted," Lemmens said. "With minimal gym space, I was kind of at the mercy of whatever was open.
"The way I like to use them is you have a couple right away at the beginning of the summer so you can show everyone what you want, what you expect and just kind of go over everything so that they can take that and put it into tournament games or practice," he added. "Then I like to sit back and watch a little bit ... see any areas that need to be addressed. From there we build on it and we're able to come up with some drills so that we can fix that. And then they have the rest of the summer to work on it again. Then at the very end of the summer, I like to have a couple days to light a fire before August comes around."
Lemmens has used three additional days in the past couple weeks and plans to use his final day in the next week or so.
Both the boys' and the girls' basketball teams, have played in summer leagues over the course of the past month and a half to go along with the weekly practices.
RHS boys' hockey coach M.J. Laggis was a little more limited as to when he could schedule his contact days as the ice at the Rhinelander Ice Arena is out for much of the summer.
During the three weeks that the ice is available, which ends this weekend, the team practiced every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 7-8 a.m. They also played nine summer games, the final of which occurred last night.
While Laggis can't be on the ice instructing all those days, he had a number of different individuals leading practice in his absence, including youth coach Tom Roeser and East Coast Hockey League coach Tim Branham.
It is legal for those individuals to be on the ice instructing as long as they are not coaching in either an assistant or head capacity in the upcoming year.
Laggis said he prefers to use his contact time on days that the team has both a practice and a game. Like Mattek and Lemmens, even when he is not instructing, he is often watching and taking notes.
Jim Moore, the head football coach, elected to use all five of his days right away, during the week of June 13-17.
According to a recent survey done by the WIAA, Moore is in the minority of football coaches in terms of when he used the days. The survey showed that 186 of 312 coaches decided to wait until the final week of July, right before practice starts, to utilize their contact days.
"We had always gone that last week in July, but this year we were going to work on some new stuff," Moore said. "What we wanted to do is (introduce) the new stuff, hoping that the guys would get together and work on it during the summer on their own."
Since June, there have been practices scheduled by the captains. But according to Moore, they have really struggled to get kids to play seven-on-seven, because most of their quarterbacks are in baseball.
Not all coaches, however, use their summer contact days. One of those individuals is boys' and girls' head soccer coach Dan Millot.
Millot said that many of his players compete in club soccer already and he doesn't want to take away time that they can spend with their family or he can spend with his.
About contact days
Coaches were first granted the opportunity to have summer contact with their student-athletes in 2001. According to Wade Labecki, who is the WIAA contact person for coach-athlete contact, the decision was met with much opposition.
As time has passed, more coaches have bought into the concept of contact days, many times because they feel its the only way to remain on an even playing field with their competition.
In both 2009 and 2010, a proposed amendment to the WIAA constitution, which would allow unlimited contact during the summer, was rejected by delegates. Currently, exemptions to the five contact days are made for baseball, soccer and golf.
Labecki said that violations of the rule in terms of exceeding the number of days is not frequent and a more common problem is the accusation that the practice was made mandatory, which is prohibited.
"Many times it will be (implied) to the kids that this is something you need to do in order to make the team. That's illegal," he said. "That's probably a bigger violation that we will see or have a coach accused of then going over the number of days. Everyone can count to five."
During the five contact days, coaches can choose to practice however long that they would like, even if it is from 12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. The coach also has free reign on the activities or drills that are worked on.
While the summer contact rule has been in place for 11 summers now, Labecki said he has had an unusually high number of inquiries from parents this year.
"I've been amazed that this summer I have had more parents calling in and asking if this is the right way that coaches should be doing this and so on," Labecki said. "I think the parents are tiring of the summer contact as well."
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