TodayFall high school sports: New coaches, new ideas
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Article RatingElise Zimmerman had a fair amount of success in her senior season last year with the Juniata College field hockey team.
The 2002 Cumberland Valley graduate was named to the Dartfish/NFHCA South Atlantic All-Region second team to go along with All-Commonwealth Conference first team honors.
On top of that, she scored a career-high four goals - second on the Eagles - and four assists, also second on the team, and was a co-captain.
So after Zimmerman received her diploma, you can't blame her for wanting to stick with the sport.
“I decided when my senior season was over at Juniata that I didn't really want my field hockey career to be over,” she says. “But my eligibility was up.”
She found another way to stay in the field hockey world. A teammate told her that Boiling Springs High School had an opening for a field hockey coach. It seemed like a natural fit for Zimmerman, who lives in Boiling Springs.
School personnel agreed. And now Zimmerman is the Bubblers' head coach.
“I was graduating and was going to be in the area,” she says. “It turned out that I was hired.”Zimmerman got her first real taste of coaching Monday as high school fall sports teams around the state held their first official practices.
“We started with a timed mile and I was very surprised,” she says. “I had made a workout package and lot of girls had sent in their times. All of them had made their times better from the summer, so I was very impressed right from the beginning.”
Carlisle boys' soccer coach Jason Moyer, Mechanicsburg golf coach Doug Erney and Shippensburg girls' volleyball coach Jamie Carroll were among area coaches holding their first practices of the fall season Monday. Erney and Carroll, like Zimmerman, are stepping into the head coach's role for the first time, while Moyer is entering his fifth season at the helm of the Thundering Herd.
But while they all coach different sports and have varying degrees of coaching experience, all four had the same focus for the first day - concentrate on the fundamentals and get a sense of the team's potential.
“You just need to establish an attitude, establish some standards and some goals,” says Moyer. “We did some heavy conditioning and some fitness tests.”
“The first day you go over the basics, see what they know, see what level they're at,” Carroll says. “If they're ready for varsity level is pretty much what I start looking at. You want to figure that out as soon as possible so you can get started on practices.”
Erney's aim was the same, but he took a different approach. The Wildcats' heavy early schedule includes four matches in the first week. Since the early afternoon start for most golf matches requires players to leave school early, frontloading the schedule with matches before the first day of classes helps keep missed school time to a minimum, though it makes Erney's job a bit tougher.
So Monday, instead of doing conditioning or workouts, Erney and the 19 players who showed up at the first practice hit the links.
They'll do the same thing today, Wednesday and Thursday.
“I'm treating it like the PGA, a four-day tournament,” Erney says. “It's kind of like a qualifying for the team and those top seven spots next week.
“I'm using this week to figure out who the best players are. You can't do that practicing, you have to get out and see the numbers.”
And the numbers looked pretty good Monday. Erney had five players under 85, and only one who struggled.
“But he only started playing a month ago,” Erney adds. “I saw him chip one in and he was so happy he started yelling because he got an 8.”
Granted, the team played from the white tees Monday, which shortened the course a bit. Still, Erney, who isn't a stranger to coaching after coaching Mechanicsburg's baseball team and serving as an assistant for the Elizabethtown College baseball program, is pleased with the solid start, noting that his players exceeded his expectations.
Zimmerman's expectations haven't firmed up yet as she gets to know her team and find out what her players are capable of. For now, she hopes to get through her first season successfully while learning from her players, their parents and other Bubbler sports programs.
As a new coach, she knows this season will be a big learning experience. Ultimately, though, her goals - and those of any coach - aren't entirely in her own hands.
“There are some definite advantages to being a first-year coach,” she says. “I'm young, coming out of college, so I have a handle on the most recent information from field hockey. “But the disadvantage is there's definitely coaches out there with more experience in the coaching aspect. I might have more experience in playing, but there's a lot of strategy that I'm sure I'll find out about this season.
“I'm willing to take them as far as they want to go. I told them I could teach them what they needed to do to win, but they have to do it. They have to perform on the field.”
