About 20 years ago, I was a volunteer goalkeeper coach at Corvallis High School in Oregon, working with a star high school goalkeeper on the eve of one of the biggest games of her life: a matchup against Jesuit, the perennial powerhouse every Oregon team dreams of knocking off. Fired up and trying to teach her to dive for high balls the way my high school goalkeeper coach Larry Carlson had once taught me, I set up a drill that required her to dive over obstacles (other goalkeepers!) to make saves. It was intense, old‑school, and heroic.
Then again, it was also reckless.
During the session, she took an awkward landing, picked up a minor injury, and the next day she couldn’t play against Jesuit. Her team battled without her and lost by a single goal—exactly the kind of tight game where having your starting goalkeeper might change everything. She recovered fully within a few days and went on to finish a strong season, helping her team reach the state quarterfinals, but that doesn’t erase my coaching mistake or the opportunity she lost.
Why This Is Wankah-Worthy
This Wankah Award (What NOT to do.) is well earned because I:
- Put “cool” training ahead of athlete safety and availability for the next day’s match.
- Copied a drill from my own playing days without asking if it was appropriate for this player, this field, or this moment.
- Forgot that my job as a coach is to protect the player’s long‑term experience, not relive my most memorable high school drill.
There’s a bigger lesson here: we don’t automatically become good coaches just because we survived a certain drill as players. Every time we recycle what our old coaches did—especially the risky stuff—we roll the dice with someone else’s body and season.
The Takeaway for Coaches
If you’re an athletic coach, think twice before rolling out that “epic” drill you loved (or hated) in high school. Ask yourself:
- Is it safe, or can I make it safer?
- Is this the right drill the day before a huge game?
- Am I doing this for the player, or for my own nostalgia and ego?
And the Winner Is…
So, congrats Coach Shawn—you are the proud winner of Team Culture Wankah Award (#3) for training your keeper like it was 1989. Here’s to all of us retiring the dumb drills we inherited and replacing them with safer ones that keeps our athletes on the field where they belong.
What epically unsafe drills or games do you remember from your high school playing days?
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