Michigan Coaching Clinic No. 4 mini-recap

A different format took over the Michigan coaching clinic today, for a variety of reasons. First, head coach John Paul was only present for the first few minutes – JP has a new daughter at home (just a couple days old), and obviously had more important things to deal with. It was also the final coaching clinic of the fall/winter, and the first hour was occupied by guest speakers.

• Holly Schoonover, the team’s trainer, talked a bit about concussions and the impact that they’ve had on contact sports and coaching recently.
• Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher from Michigan Neurosport, talked at more length about concussions, the possible long-term repercussions, and how to help players recover from concussions (without coming back to sports too soon).
• Changing topics, the team’s strength and conditioning coach, Bo Sandoval, went through the dynamic stretching program that the team uses for pre-game and pre-practice routines.

After that, the two coordinators ran through a couple sets of drills that they use in their pre-game warmups.

The primary focus of the X-and-O portion was the clearing game. Ken Broschart ran through some of the concepts that they use to beat opposing teams’ rides, and some of the drills that they run in practice to help them succeed in games.

An interesting note from the presentation on clearing was that Coach Broschart mentioned that the team’s goal this year is a 90% success rate on clears this season. To do that, they’re going to value possession of the ball, rather than taking risks to earn transition opportunities. One thing: 90% is an absurd goal, one that only three teams hit last year (Virginia, Hofstra, and Syracuse). If the team can hit that mark in a year where they’re admittedly behind the 8-ball in terms of talent, it would be an impressive coaching job.

There were about 50 coaches in attendance to catch the clinic tonight (47 last I counted, with a couple more filtering in).