Success is Habit Forming

How do you build a successful high school sports program?  Can you build from the bottom up, or does it come from the top down?  Usually, a high school baseball coach doesn't run the Little League, but introducing young athletes to volleyball becomes a necessity if you want to compete against the best teams in the state.

Coaching. Melrose is fortunate to have a stable coaching staff, with the reigning Coach of the Year in Scott Celli, with a 257-63 career record, and including playoffs, usually a 20 win season each year.  With Assistant coach Steve Wall and freshman coach Andrea Basteri, the coaches make volleyball not only successful but fun, and most of the players view it as their favorite sport. Coach Celli has also developed a volleyball infrastructure with summer camp instruction, so that youngsters in elementary school get an introduction to the sport early. I believe that over thirty girls were playing in offseason leagues, so the girls are up and running at full speed early, and competition to make the team has never been greater.

Players. The extensive offseason preparation gets players ready for varsity competition earlier than ever before.  We can expect to see freshmen contributing early each year, just as Hannah Brickley did in 2006, Amanda Commito in 2009, and Cassidy Barbaro will in 2010.  Hollywood gets it wrong. Girls sports are replete with ATHLETES, players with terrific hand-eye coordination, strength, quickness, speed, and toughness.  They work to become not only skilled but highly conditioned. To quote Madeline Blais' award-winning book, "In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle."

Community.  Volleyball has developed a big following locally, with enthusiastic crowds at most games. The sport gets support via Community Television (MMTV), the print media, and the Internet. Both the Melrose Free Press and the Melrose Weekly provide excellent coverage, and Maxpreps.com is also another valuable resource.

Women's athletics provides a big payoff to the community, with a cadre of leaders and role models, and health and academic benefits to the players.


Here's an excerpt from the Women's Sports Foundation:

• High school girls who play sports are less likely to be involved in an unintended pregnancy; more likely to get better grades in school and more likely to graduate than girls who do not play sports.
  
• As little as four hours of exercise a week may reduce a teenage girl's risk of breast cancer by up to 60%; breast cancer is a disease that afflicts one out of every eight American women. (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 1994)
  
• Forty percent of women over the age of 50 suffers from osteoporosis (brittle bones). (Osteoporosis, 1996) None of us should want our daughters to repeat the experiences of generations of women—our mothers and grandmothers—who were not permitted to play sports or encouraged to participate in weight-bearing exercises that are necessary to establishing bone mass.
  
• Girls and women who play sports have higher levels of confidence and self-esteem and lower levels of depression.
  
• Girls and women who play sports have a more positive body image and experience higher states of psychological well-being than girls and women who do not play sports.
  
• Sport is where boys have traditionally learned about teamwork, goal-setting, the pursuit of excellence in performance and other achievement-oriented behaviors—critical skills necessary for success in the workplace. In an economic environment where the quality of our children's lives will be dependent on two-income families, our daughters cannot be less prepared for the highly competitive workplace than our sons. It is no accident that 80% of the female executives at Fortune 500 companies identified themselves as former "tomboys"—having played sports.

Most important, women follow sports into the competitive workplace. "I will" equals "I can."