PasadenaISD McDonald's Texas Invitational Tournament

Each year, my district hosts one of Texas' biggest high school basketball tournaments called the Texas Invitational. Because our school is an old high school, it's used to host games Thursday and Friday. For the past few years a coach or teacher on campus has acted as campus liason for those days. As a part of my internship this year, I will be acting as host for those games.

http://www.texasinvitational.com/

PCA Trainings Coming Up

The Positive Coaching Alliance trainings are coming up and I gearing up to attend and evaluate. Thankfully some are during the evenings so I can attend. One center asked about having the trainers also train other staff as well. I think the youth sports directors are excited about what these trainings will bring to the program.

YMCA OFFICE

Well as the school year draws close, last week was my last day working in the office full time witht the GreaterHoustonYMCA. Although I will not be in the office full time, I will still be working with them in the evenings, on the weekends, and especially with bringing their youth and government program to our school. I've identified two potential teachers who are interested in hearing more about the program and possibly work with me to introduce it to our school.

My other objective will be to continue working with the Sports Program leadership team in revamping their current policies and procedures to hold their directors and coordinators more accountable.

I look forward to my continued partnership with them.

August 10

Just realized how similar this spreadsheet is to what we used to do at the university I worked at. We had a report we would run out of our department in admission that would break down all the potential student in the database. It looked something like this:

Inquired 50

Applied 40

Accepted 20
TOTAL 110

Essentially our goal was to move all INQURED students to the ACCEPTED category. The more students we had in ACCEPTED, the higher the yield that would actually attend in the fall or spring semesters. Each week I had to report the number to our Dean in our staff meetings, who in return had to report it to the other VPs and Deans, more importantly, the university President. We kept historical data on these numbers comparing weeks to weeks, months to months, and years to years. I believe this is the same thing Cindy is trying to accomplish with the youth sports spreadsheet and tracking their numbers for each center in each sport.

August 10

Good morning, just checking in. Pretty quiet in the office today. Just working on a spreadsheet to show which youth sports are offered at each center and their budgets. In addition working on a wrap up email to be sent out regarding the August 4th meeting we had. What items discussed are of importance and how to move forward. Other than that, blessed to be up this morning and breathing. Have a great week.

D.

BOBBY BOSWELL DYNAMO visit to ALIEF YMCA

Pics of Dynamo professional soccer player Bobby Boswell visiting with kids at the Alief YMCA. These are visits he makes often to run through a quick clinic with the kids participating and to hand out free shirts. Dynamo also donated soccer balls that will be distributed to select YMCA centers throughout Houston.

Youth Sports Directors Meeting

Here are pics of the Youth Sports Directors meeting we've been working on for the last few weeks. Cindy did a great job of relaying the fact that they will be held accountable for their programs and enrollment of new participants. Shawn B., a group executive, did a great job of talking about the importance of clustering during the afternoon part when all of the directors were there. Brian H., another group executive who talked about marketing and planning, said this was one of the most interactive groups and that he definitely thought they were walking away with good information.

Clark Baker, the CEO, also was present and spoke briefly.

Harry Colon from Positive Coaching Alliance talks with Cindy Ferguson after his training

sneak peak with the directors.

July 24

Okay, so today started with getting responses back from the memo about the PCA Training. SIDENOTE....The CEO actually sent a follow up email about the communication we sent and how it "said it all". So glad I hit all the right points. Back to the story...So I scheduled a few trainings and I was actually excited to do so.

I let Cindy know the day before that on Friday I was going to be taking pictures that I needed to send to the Tiffin and I also wanted her to do a video. Here is the pic of where I sit everyday.

Her video is below.

Her pic

The picture of us together

After I left the office, I had a meeting set-up with Kevin Kebede, Senior Program Director at the Weekley Family YMCA here in Houston.

SIDENOTE: I worked for Kevin at the same YMCA when I first moved to Houston. I was going to be discussing youth sports, the NFL grant he was receiving for the fall, Family Huddles that were implemented last year, and potential agenda items for the August 4th meeting. It was a great meeting. He was able to express what he thought needed to be addressed with youth sports and how excited he was about the new opportunities that were happening at the association and local center level.

After we met, he showed me around his camp site and the activities the kids had planned for the day, specifically Fun Day Friday....see pics below.

Today's Agenda

Well today is mainly going to be about trying to finalize agenda items for the Youth Sports Directors Meeting we have coming up. I scheduled a conference call meeting with two other leadership persons from Youth Sports that will help put items on the agenda. In addition, I am still working on getting the MEMO together to send to the Youth Sports directors regarding the PCA trainings every center will be scheduled to do. Because there are so many centers to schedule, our original plan was to break them into groups such that several centers would train at one general location. Looks like we'll have create more groups because we're learning now that some groups may exceed the 100 coach limit we wanted to stay under for the training. The trainer actually asked us to keep the number 100 for each training.

With that in mind, I sent out an email to get an estimate from each center about how many coaches they anticipate having for their sports program this fall. Several have responded and this has confirmed that we will need to add additional training dates. This will not cause a problem because PCA is working with the YMCA on offering the trainings and has even incorporated some Saturday dates as needed, so we'll see what happens.

I think the rest of the day will consist of creating those remaining groups and hopefully emailing the MEMO out to the directors so we can start getting these dates in and scheduling the trainings. We would like to have this done before the August 4th training where they will be introduced to their trainer and will have the opportunity to meet him before their training session with him.

INTERESTING CONVERSATION
Today I was introduced to the Director of Purchasing who had the opportunity to be a chaperone with the YTeens group twice on their Freedom Tour. The purpose of the tour is a bus ride through the different states that were significant to the civil rights movement. Sharon, the Director of Purchasing, was able to give her opinion about the trip and say how much she learned as an african-american. The trip visits the site where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, the Little Rock Central Museum, and Central High School to name a few. It was great to see how the YMCA does activities like these for their teens. Cindy even mentioned expanding the trip and visiting other historic sites dealing with other rights violations and crimes against humanity. GREAT STUFF!

July 21

PCA Meeting

Today we met with the Positive Coaching Alliance or PCA. Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) is transforming youth sports so sports can transform youth. Through partnerships with more than 1,100 youth sports organizations, leagues, schools and cities nationwide, PCA has conducted 6,000-plus workshops for youth sports coaches, parents, organizational leaders and ahtletes.

Our meeting was with Ben Rose and Harry Colon of the organization. We discussed how PCA will play a roll in training coaches and youth sports directors on what they offer and grouping the Houston centers together to begin planning training for the centers. In addition, Harry Colon, the Houston trainer, will be visiting with the youth sports directors on August 4th during their cabinet meeting to give them a brief introduction to PCA.

What I love about the organization is that their national spokesperson is the infamous Phil Jackson, and is supported by Stanford University's Women's basketball coach, Tara VanDerveer. Coach VanDerveer recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from PCA.

http://www.positivecoach.org