Man, another year is almost over. It’s been another great year, so let’s take a look at a few of the highlights. We’ll also look at my predictions for last year and what to look forward to this coming year.

2015 Highlights:

  • We had our second Combine For Autism event and had National Champion OSU Buckeye footballers, Joshua Perry and Craig Fada, help out. The kids really enjoyed it and they couldn’t have been nicer and more accommodating.
  • More of our athletes made the jump to play collegiately. I might forget a few, but the list includes Hannah Fecht (basketball), Natalee Cole (track), Morgan Hunker (gymnastics), Amy Griffith (track), and Brad Kanney (track). Recently, Scott Brooks a senior at Hilliard Davidson committed to play lacrosse next season for Hope College. They were all real excited about it. Nice job everybody!!
  • A few of our athletes got some high accolades last year in their sport. At the state track meet this year, Aziza Ayoub got 5th in the state in the 400M for Division II. Benton Wilson was on the 6th place 4x400M team for Division I. Natalee Cole was the anchor for the 4×200 team in Division III.

Predictions I Had For 2015:

  • I wanted to work with more female basketball and soccer players and that has happened, but what hinders that more are the teams themselves. They are demanding so much from the athletes to improve the skill of the sport (which I think is leading to more injuries), they don’t have time to train to better themselves as athletes.
  • I wanted to do more off-site training and that didn’t happen due to some staff limitations. I guess we will try it again for next year.
  • I thought Crossfit will start tapering off.  It has probably stayed the same. I know the Crossfit place next to me closed down, but there are still plenty of them out there and those games are starting to become a freak show. Is there any drug testing involved to participate in those games?

2016 Predictions:

  • I think there is going to be a new injury related to cell phone activity and social media. My athletes go to their phones during just about every break. Doctors will find some type of injury due to looking at their phone too much.
  • I will have athletes that will now attend school via their travel teams. The travel teams are doing so much nowadays “in the best interest of the athlete”, I think they will start just bringing teachers in to give them their education. That way they can do maybe an hour or two of education and the rest of the day working on what’s really important – soccer.
  • On a more serious note, I’m going to awaken our nutrition/supplements program and start doing nutritional consults with our athletes. Nutrition is just as valuable as speed/strength training. If you can fine tune that, you can give yourself a real advantage on the playing field.

Have a great New Year and see you in 2016!!

Photo courtesy of Sally Mahoney on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sally_12/