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Nicholas Bandstra
Head Coach Bradford HS (OH)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CoachBandstra
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all right thanks we really appreciate it um anytime we get an opportunity to connect and network like this it’s uh something that we all should take advantage of as coaches so just really thankful to to be on here today and get a chance to talk some ball in April yeah so my topic today I chose something Beyond X’s and O’s and there might be some suggestions in here that many of you guys do um things that that you’ve had a lot of success with so um definitely not uh not the inventor of any of this everything in football is stolen um but but I think this is such a critical topic uh I think the the future of football is going to depend more on this uh as we get going and uh so I just hope I can highlight a few things to help help others out and if you ever have any questions or anything please you know reach out uh if not today you know down the road in the future I plan to be on be at Ogden for a while so uh I know sometimes we get back to these things a little bit later as coaches and uh yeah you’ll know where to find me you know just a little bit about me my my wife Maggie and I um oh I didn’t correct that there we’ve actually been married 14 years my wife and I had gone through this earlier and yeah so there’s minus one for me already but um we’ve been together 14 years I have four children our our daughter Janetta was a foster daughter and uh has been with us for two years she goes to University of Northern Iowa um then I have my my oldest son Carson my middle son Parker and then my my daughter is adelyn played my college football at Morningside College it’s now Morningside University um my time there was awesome we finished the top five in the nation but since I’ve left they’ve won multiple conference championships multiple national titles at the ni level and um coach Steve Ryan is a Hall of Fame coach and he was my position coach in college so learned a lot from him and really enjoyed it um then I went sio cheen High School small school in Northwest Iowa was there for two years I was the defensive coordinator there for a season and then went back to my hometown of Sheldon and was there for 11 years um coached a lot of different things there was an assistant coach for my for my hero my high school head coach Matt mandering who’s the principal at ding Catholic in De Mo and learned a lot from him and then got my start as a head coach there as well and kind of thought my life would play out like a a story book and I’d be there forever and that didn’t happen and here I am at Ogden um started this past season uh moved here July 31 uh started Camp July 31 so it’s been uh quite the transition for for myself and my family but that’s where we find ourselves currently and we’ve really enjoyed our move here and um then I I put the playoff qualifier things there I think that’s a that’s a goal you’ve got to Aspire to in coaching and so I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of five different playoff teams and three as the head coach those are the ones that are involded there and you know you just kind of take those things and keep moving forward and then my hook I always said if I had an opportunity to share you know anything about my life or my journey and coaching I I always wanted to touch on this my my youngest son Parker uh at the age of two was diagnosed with a pre-leukemic condition and had a life-saving bone marrow transplant uh so as coaches I know we Network and and we have you know situations that arise in our community and those types of things um if if you ever have a situation with pediatric cancer or anything like that I’m willing to network with anybody on that something that’s really close to my heart um my wife and I have used this uh for good and um you know obviously our outcome was very positive and my son lives like a normal 11y old right now um and that’s not always the case um but he did he had a life-saving bone marrow transplant at the University of Minnesota we’re big Iowa fans so um got to give Minnesota their props uh there where it’s due but um just just those things uh make sure I always wanted to share that uh as I get a chance to network with people from all around the nation because it really is a small world at times and um if anybody you know is is going through anything like that anybody in the coaching realm U my son was released from the hospital January 27th of 2015 and I was offered the head coaching job at Sheldon that that March um so that was a quick transition there um was a scary undertaking at that time not knowing um if that transplant had worked or not and uh like I said here we are today so just wanted to make sure I got that plug out there um you know my personal mission statements listed there I just want my children biological Foster students players those to just have a better life than I had grown up I had an absent father um and that made things difficult growing up both just as being a male in society and then um financially and those kinds of things and and so I just always use that as my driving force moving forward and you know then then I drive into my vision it’s a players game and games are intended to be fun and I went to the Oxford dictionary you know the old Google search and uh you know you guys can read the definition there but I highlighted and and colored the word luck so winning is not all you know the pieces that we put together the plays that we draw the play call that we had on fourth down that was just phenomenal sometimes punt is the best play call um but there is a there an element of luck there and and you’ve got to have that um in there as well and and we’re we’re there for the drive and the competition those kinds of things but our players might be dealing with something different and then the other thing I ask coaches all the time is would you play for you and I think that’s something that it takes a long time to kind of sit back look in the mirror and say am I somebody that I would have played for I was inspired by Matt mandering my high school head coach um not because of his football knowledge but because he took an interest in my life and I didn’t play football as a freshman and here I had this at the time uh coach mandering was the JB coach saying hey you should really be out for football and just those words kind of drove me uh to go out and I had a wonderful playing career wonderful experiences obviously led to a college career um he changed my life just by showing an interest in me so I think we can never underestimate the platform that we have in this position and that’s something that we’ve got to keep in mind and Coach maning ended up being my head coach my Junior and Senior year of high school we played for a state Championship I mean it was a it was a phenomenal experience so just don’t underestimate those things and then yeah obviously have the you know the quote there from the movie Remember the Titans zero fund sir and that’s how football used to be um that’s not how football can be anymore I don’t believe that um if you’re running your program that way kudos to you must have a really supportive Community um but I think kids are there because they want to have fun and play the game you know statistically I’m not going to read all this for you but we’re losing kids that are rap rate and I think that’s why we need to look sometimes outside the X’s and O’s because that that All-Star quarterback at the seventh grade level you might have a really hard time getting him to come out as a freshman for a variety of reasons and I think postco we’re more aware of some of the things that are you know outlined on the left with you know substance abuse uh mental health issues Eating Disorders those kinds of things and I could you know fall down that rabbit hole of coaching and tell you all kinds of stories of players dealing with a lot of things that I never would have anticipated players who didn’t want to gain weight um because they didn’t want that physique but it would have really helped their recruiting and I think those are things that we need to keep in the Forefront of our minds and maybe not in the back of our minds and then there’s just a lot of pressure that’s out there um there’s a lot of different things that uh are placed on kids and I know there’s also the counterargument that we’ve gone soft and we’ve done all those things but as coaches these are the kids that we’re getting um one of the biggest changes that I had moving from Sheldon to Ogden Sheldon was a school that had just gone over 50% free and reduced lunch and I know there’s a lot of coaches out there that can you know attest to those same things and numbers that are even higher but it creates a lot of barriers that you would to anticipate now coming to Ogden we’re at 23% free and reduceed lunch and I can tell you it is a lot different it changes the way that I coach so we need to keep these things in mind as well and continue to have this dialogue and and conversations with players and um I think football is unique because we need more players than any other sport also we need the eight 18y old players we need the guys that are older because we don’t know how kids going to grow mature and develop I was a middle school quarterback that was not my claim to fame in high school I moved to the offensive line for the better and so that’s something that a lot of kids face a lot of kids go through and I think as coaches we need to keep that in mind so some of the nuts and bolts here um that I’ve outlined in this presentation um and I tried to kind of break things down you know from a cost perspective because that’s I I did a podcast with coach Salis that was released in February and outlined some of these things so I’ll try to you know be cognizant of time and and not go on my coach’s soap box here for too long but um I try to break them down into things that are free things that are about under 1500 bucks because I think I could get that done here at Ogden and then things that are over 1500 bucks now Ogden’s a class 1a school in the state of Iowa uh we have about 250 students in our building give or take grades 9 12 and I have about 50 kids on my roster so that gives you kind of a a sense of where we’re at um but some of the free strategies that I have on there and things that I’ve used call every boy in the high school to gauge their interest in playing football and even and and I say this and I and I mean it even if they’re out for cross country you know when they write country songs they don’t write about running around a golf course they write about playing on Friday nights or being on the team on a Friday night and uh there’s dual sport policies in place I’ve had them at both schools that I’ve been a head coach at you’d be amazed at how many kids um would would consider that now it takes some flexibility on both coaches parts so I guess you got to kind of know uh what you’re stepping into but at Sheldon my wife was the head Cross Country Coach so that was pretty easy to have those conversations with her and I know at Ogden we’re sharing kids all the time um I haven’t had a player take me up on that but I’m also not going to let that be the reason that I don’t have another body on the sidelines on a Friday night because uh talented kids are talented kids Runners are Runners and everybody needs them and we’re all sharing them and we’ve got to cognizant of that um this whole calling thing started during covid because I didn’t have contact with my kids you know all schools closed down and hadn’t seen them for a long time and it was a really unique thing to call kids and ask hey you gonna come out for football and when I started as a head coach 2015 we only had 38 kids on our roster and we went 0 and nine so that takes a lot of reflection there too and I think it was for the better I think every coach should go 0 and9 their first year as a head coach that really help humbles you um but postco we had 81 kids show up one day for camp now they were looking for a lot of different things um during that time I think kids were bored uh by that point as well but I also think that these phone calls helped a lot I heard about kids remodeling bathrooms I heard about kids that um you know that had gone on you know family trips or vacations and all those kinds of things so it’s become it’s become the norm I’ll sit down the last couple weeks of July and start calling kids and if it’s kind of if it’s not a hard no I’ll call the kids as parents and then have that conversation as well um because you just want those thingss pushed on there and I again I could go down the rabbit hole and give you countless examples of kids who have come out just based on phone call another thing I would say is when you finish your Camp week and I don’t know what that looks like for these other states but when you finish Camp week you know think of something fun that you can do games um we we call them the Olympics so Shelton has the worst mascot in America okay it was voted by ESPN Sheldon was the home of the orabs It’s a combination of the school colors orange and black you can look it up it’s real I graduated from there I’m an Orab okay and so we had the Orab Olympics well now I’m in Ogden we’re the Bulldog so I have Bulldog Olympics that that we do so we come up with a bunch of games and things you can have them compete by grade you can have them draft Cades or teams I know that’s a really popular thing but think of something you can do there um player day where they lead the workouts or the practice those are really fun it’s coaches you can stand by the fence or uh you know you got to keep some sort of supervision on them but you know have have the kids kind of run it see what it looks like because they’re a reflection of you you really want some feedback there and you want to give them some ownership that’s that’s a really easy thing to do there uh Signing Day if you’re not doing signing days in the spring uh I really would you know suggest that you do that I think that’s something that’s really exciting for the community you can blast it on social media you can put it out there uh handwritten notes when we went 0 and9 that was something that I started doing right away um was trying to highlight things that I saw during basketball or wrestling from from my players um that I could say Hey you know you made those two key free throws the other night that’s huge you’re gonna perform in crunch time for us come fall um and kids don’t get those things anymore and schools have stationary and everything like that that’s free and then we have an adopted player program which I already mentioned I talked about on the Joe Salis podcast in more detail but we have members of the community I sent out a letter uh I’ve stood up in front of the church groups and those kinds of things to try to get uh players to or try to get community members to adopt a player of ours and support them during the season and the only thing I asked for is words of encouragement and they send it to the school and that’s it now it’s blossomed it it becomes more than that it becomes care packages uh meals out to eat text messages uh all kinds of things um but that’s a that’s a free thing to start and I would highly I would I would encourage you to to think about that um some of those things that are under $1,500 you know take a day off go to the pool what do you you out I mean really these the kids are going to talk about this they’re going to tell their friends to come out um you it’s hot out there like come on we’re miserable too sometimes so you know do those things I would also suggest as a coach purchase an offensive and defensive system uh I don’t I don’t work for jdfbjkdfbnjbv their weight and gold and it helps streamline things for you as a coach and that is that is x’s and O related but it takes some of that work off your plate and allows you to focus more on the kids uh have those team meals uh we have kids over all the time I’ve served tacos Burgers I’ve ordered pizzas all those kinds of things um that kind of stuff is is big for kids and it adds up but you know what you’d be amazed at you know what parent groups want to be involved with that what booster clubs want to want to be a part of that and we try to do something like that with our guys at least uh once a month and then we have a junior senior player Retreat and I talked about this at length on on my podcast with Joe Joe Salis but we take our Juniors and seniors and we go to um an area College that’s what it’s become the first year we were at a retreat center by a by a lake and we just hang out and that first year we were just coming off an 09 season and we had lost 14 games in a row we did zero well not zero football we did very little football um we did a seven on seven with a local team up at the Lakes and then that was that was it and we played ghost in the graveyard and we ran around and did all that stuff um we didn’t feed the kids as well as we do now that was something I learned they didn’t just want peanut butter and jelly but that was something cheap that I could throw out there um but that was that was a really uh unique time and experience for us and we came back we won our first game that year against a team who was ranked in the top 10 and I’m not saying it was the retreat but I don’t think it hurt and I think it really fortified us for what we were going to go through and that team went on to have great success um and was a phenomenal team kind of a foundational building block for us uh moving forward and and a team that’s going to be remembered in school history for a really long time so I would encourage you to do that now that’s more if I take him to college campuses now um I like the dorm setting a little better because it helps me kind of keep an eye on them also gives them exposure to college coaches uh the other thing I was dealing with at Sheldon I didn’t have kids that were College Bound so this gave them an opportunity to get a tour of Campus the the coaches that I’m in contact with at multiple colleges love it because it’s free recruiting for them uh their new coaches on staff get a chance to practice giving it t her and I just think there’s a lot to there’s a lot to take there with you and doesn’t have to be anything great and I’m telling you it’s under 1500 bucks and that’s without that’s without asking for the booster club to kick in or you know if if you’re well off and you got a good club program account or whatever I’m saying like Bare Bones you can get that done for like 1,200 bucks for about 28 30 kids you know five six coaches it’s phenomenal call restaurants ask for a college discount most places will give that to you um just by giving them a heads up so there’s some things there that that you can take from that middle category and then lastly the over $1,500 you know for us it’s pizza after every game I know some programs you probably have great parent support and those kinds of things um I was dealing with some things in my previous uh position that just parents weren’t as involved um we had a higher Hispanic population so that just created its own barrier there and when we asked him at the end of the season what do you like best about the season you know you’d love it to be winning right it was pizza after the game so yeah you could say x’s and O is all you want but if you take care of kids and you meet those basic needs that they have they’re going to run through a brick wall for you so that was something that we did there um we use fundraising incentives now fundraising in itself I think is going to change as we go into the future but when we do incentives for fundraising we do team incentives so if we sell a 100 cards of whatever it is we get music in the locker room if we sell 200 cards they can have music at the practice field that doesn’t cost me anything and it motivates the kids to work as a team now when you get up there a little bit higher um we get into these player packs where they get three t-shirts pair of shorts they got stocking hats one year they got Under Armour hoodies another year um I always call our vendors and suppliers to see if they’re like closing out anything that I can get at a discount and I’ll buy it early because I kind of know the numbers of my program and then I can go um off of that a little bit and you’ll have kids so we at Sheldon I was in a community of 5,000 people we would sell a thousand cards Ogden’s a community of about 20 2100 2300 people we sold 750 cards last year and the every kid on the roster gets that stuff if you walk into Sheldon high school today I guarantee there’s a third of that school around with something that’s Sheldon orb football forever orbs that was our that was our thing there um here it’s dogs dgs I don’t know why it’s just what it is so that’s what they do and you brand those kids and they’re walking around and hey I got this for free you don’t think there’s a kid in your hallways that wants free clothes you’re crazy and they’ll hand it down to their younger siblings it’s a phenomenal thing they give it to their parents and at Sheldon with that free and reduce lunch challenge that we had there they didn’t have school gear they didn’t have school apparel so that one way that we could filter it in there and get our kids wearing orange and black every day um Guardian caps I don’t work for Guardian cap I’m just telling you it’s a really good thing that we invested it at both programs it was really positive knock on wood haven’t had a single concussion at practice since we started using those things we got our we got them for our middle schoolers here so 712 we’re all in the guardian cap it’s phenomenal thing and then we started a youth program development uh here so we have it’s aaou I don’t know if that’s a curse word in other states but it’s really crazy for us and so it’s AA Affiliated but we’re running it through our tiny little town and that has been something that we’re willing to invest in it takes a lot of time my wife helps me I love her you know so I I I really appreciate her help with that um but that has been huge for us and that’s going to be you know something that we ride on into the future with that it’s only sv7 uh so you know the balls in the air thron and catching and those kinds of things and everybody wants to be the quarterback um but this is something that is I think the the future wave for us and something that we can invest in and that club account is going to come around and help us with all kinds of things both in Our Youth Development and at our high school level um lastly here I mean I think some things to think about as we get into the future and things that I’m continually working on my wife gets mad at me why are you always doing something why why is this always changing why are you I think that’s just the nature of who I am and I think as coaches it’s something we need to be cognizant of um so I think you got an increased social media presence that’s free that’s free I didn’t use x you know it’s or was Twitter now it’s X I didn’t use that stuff till this year because I wanted to tell my own story I was sick and tired of people telling my story for me and not allowing me to tell it so I tell my own story so if you follow me on there I’ve got you know the stuff that I do on a daily basis and it is it is real that’s the stuff that we’re doing and that’s free I think you got to prioritize nutrition daily and post-workout um so we’re looking at how can we get more food into our building and then how can we get it to our kids post-workout and then our kids Lift Every Other Day how can we feed them every day I it’s it’s a challenge I want to take it on I want to take it head on because everybody’s lifting everybody’s lifting and you can say well I don’t get good numbers in my lifting Pro everybody’s lifting some way some whatat what is the next wave I think it’s that nutrition piece but that’s going to cost you some money you’re going to have to figure that part out and and then the last one there recruiting yep absolutely 100% And I know that’s probably not what a lot of us want to hear um but you know what college coaches don’t want to hear about nil and I think that’s the reality for us and one of the things that made this job attractive for me was at Sheldon I was losing kids to two private schools in our area there isn’t a private school within 40 miles of Ogden Iowa and there’s a 4A School eight miles down the road so you tell me what the future is going to look like if I’m increasing social media increasing participation prioritizing some of these things for development there’s going to be a kid that says I want to be a part of that I want free t-shirts I want pizza I want to be recruited let’s be honest people want to feel loved and if they’re not feel in love in their current program it is what it is Iowa we passed a voucher program it’s it is what it is and I know other states are dealing with it too so really appreciate the opportunity like I said you know there’s a lot there tried to Breeze through it quick I was checking my timer gosh I did great I did good for me and uh so those are some places you can contact me I put my cell phone on here but I don’t want to get you know blown up with a bunch of Bot calls and those kinds of things um and like I said I’m at Ogden High School so if you want to look me up on the staff directory you can get my contact information there as well oh coach per I mean generally I will say I’m highly impressed with the timing of that that is like like almost 20 minutes like probably 20 21 minutes on the dot so when I say 20 to 25 minutes like said impressed um you hit that on the dot I mean just I mean every area obviously is different and we all have our needs and I kind of like I’ve kind of been a lot of your situations um so you talked about nutrition there where where are the main way who who are you going through how are you targeting nutrition um what are you looking at at getting that’s kind of my question um terms of helping your student athletes yeah so we have um we have some local Dairy associations um that are run through the county um so they can get you some grant funding and those kinds of things for like increased milk products and that type of stuff um now the issue you’re gonna have there is Storage and uh trash because everything comes in a carton so that creates some some barriers there as well um I’ve also reached out to our local groceries now Sheldon I had two grocery stores that I could kind of network with and we never were able to get anything off the ground but I had had kind of an UPS up or uh developed kind of a decreased uh payment for granola bars so that we would at least have something there um to give our kids and then you know just taking that and then kind of moving that forward because in Sheldon we started a backpack program for disadvantage kids that would have been like 2011 2012 and that just exploded so I kind of viewed this potentially moving that same way if we can get the wheels in motion so it’s been it’s been like a two two and a half year project and I don’t have any set answers for you um but that is kind of the pathways that that we’re intending to use okay I just curious because like I said I’ve I’ve spent a lot of money on Gatorade um because Gatorade does that discount every year so like for for schools and so I’ve spent a hefty Su there and then also as as anytime I see stuff on clearance at like Kroger or anything like just buy stuff in bulk um like even like protein powder protein bars powdered does go a long way because I I probably went to about 13 different Goodwills and just bought every protein Shaker I could find those are 50 cents a dollar out of Goodwill so instead of paying your 10 to 15 bucks so those are easy to clean um absolutely so okay that’s that’s my main thing so um coaches that are jumping on and off or watching us later or whatever um make sure you uh check out coach’s Twitter and his other contact information that’s on the screen and how to get a hold of them if you have question questions um coach is really easy to get a hold of I mean I messag him on Twitter X whatever you want to call it and I mean we start talking what a matter of with within an hour um so like I said don’t hesitate get reach out to coach he does he’s doing a great job over there and um again this is the little stuff that matters it’s not the off the field stuff that builds for your community and your kids and um anytime you can help your community I think is kind of a a win-win for everybody not just from a football perspective just for overall um and then I think that’s about it coach so you can unshare your screen appreciate you um yeah thank appreciate it no problem coach
