OUSD, City Conspire to Keep Kids Obese

My apologies for the misleading headline but I am still stewing about the situation for finding practice and game fields for our high school rugby club. We search for a fair way for the City and the School District to allow better access to fields for youth sports.

There is no conspiracy but obstacles abound. On February 18 I will be attending a City Parks and Rec meeting about the future of field use.

Background info for our club team, which provides rugby to under-served and poor kids throughout Oakland. About 80-percent of our team is dirt poor and lives in the Hood. Many do not have access to traditional school sports like many of us had growing up. Every year we deal with the City and the Oakland Schools trying to get game and practice fields in winter. The City does not allow grass field use during the rainy season because it tends to thrash the fields.

So the City has told us that the policy is that we can't make reservations more than a month in advance. The issue with that is that we have to lineup referees and confirm game days with other teams, only 30 days does not allow much advance planning. Our season is February through April.

What really ticked me off is that one of our coaches finally got an audience with Castlemont High about getting on their turf field for a game. (For the record, Oakland High never responds to our annual requests for a field.) Guess how much Castelmont wants? $250 for a few hours on a Saturday. Why? Because the OUSD custodians' union has a minimum fee of 3 hours at $40 per-hour and apparently OUSD wants to profit on the rest.

I am a City resident who pays hefty property taxes like the other coaches who volunteer time for free. Oakland: Do you not get that we want to engage youth in productive outlets??? My nickname for Oakland when it comes to youth sports is "The City of No."

I learned a while ago that it's a good idea not to bitch if you don't have proposed solutions. So here are some ideas for the City dealing with how it assigns field use:

1. Give priority to youth sports. (Adults have more options for recreation.)
2. Give priority to youth sports in the "heart" of their league seasons. A season should be defined as 3 months. Teams need time to sign up for fields far more in advance of 30 days in order to schedule matches and line up referees.
3. There should be a public record or a published calender online of which group has which field when. (Don't let us wonder if a certain group has a field because of "connections" or something unsavory.)
4. If there are competing youth sports trying to get on the same field, alternate the usage. Don't just give field space every year to the most popular youth activity.
5. Look into building more all-weather fields. In the long run they are cheaper than maintaining grass.

To Oakland Unified and especially to the Custodians I say this: Stop being so protective of your literal turf.

Are we not all in this process together of allowing kids more opportunities. Why shouldn't a kid in Oakland have as much opportunity as a kid in Moraga or Orinda?

Fools In The Rain?

The torrential rains killed our practices this week. Part of me understands but the part of me who never missed practice in any sport until I was over 40 found it revolting.

Our numbers are struggling. We do have a grass field but we would have made a mess of it playing in the rain. Dirt would have been shifted and ugly when the Brookdale field dries.

The solution is getting the team on an all-weather turf surface field such as Raimondi but we are still baffled as to who gets those winter practice slots before we get it.

I had wanted kids to show up and run on pavement in the rain. I want to send a message to them that some days suck, in life and in work, and you just need to show up and do your best. I have credentials for such suck it up measures. First, it was 5 years of Pop Warner football, never canceled for any rain, heat, etc. August meant football.

In high school it was four years of wrestling. Not outdoors but all the running, cutting weight, the tortorous practices and while studying in school. My crowning achievement in high school wrestling was going from mediocre to above average, that and the time I lost 9 pounds in less than two days before a match.

Coaching is a balancing act. But Coach Burke and I wonder if we are creating a bunch of softies by not having them run in the rain. Still, do we want to burn someone out by being ogres?

In all my nearly 20 years playing men's club rugby I never had a practice canceled. I remember playing in a game with our flanker on a cold day who had to be pulled because he had such low body-fat that he was shivering.

Sports do also build character and not just reveal it. Next time, we get wet and we run as a team.

Tragic Real-Life Lesson from Coach Isaac

The kids came to practice tonight, not exactly on time but they showed. I had a little venom in me for the initial conditioning session, telling them that they need to be ready when we start training at 5 pm. We had lost 25 minutes or so of valuable time under the lights. We never let them forget that rugby is first and foremost a running game that demands endurance and power.

It was our first night of live contact. We would have preferred to start contact much sooner but now that we are becoming an established program, we had to wait until all the kids and parents signed the necessary waivers to allow tackling. We try to teach them the right way to tackle and go into contact. After all, this is rugby and not football. Leading with your head in tackles in rugby will get you knocked silly and can incur injury if not done correctly. The great thing this season is that on any given night, we have 3 to 5 coaches supervising.

At the end of each practice coaches talk, not just about rugby but about life. Coach Soni asked Jose Pena, a former Warthog player who has made the Cal team, what happens if Cal players are late for training. Jose said that he was late for one Cal training and got a "strike" against him. Two strikes and you might be off the Cal team, Jose said matter-of-factly.

It was Isaac's turn. Just last week Isaac had told the kids that they need to make important life choices. He implored them to go the college-route and avoid hanging out on the corner.

Tonight, Isaac had more urgency in his talk. He told us that he missed practice Monday night because he was at a funeral for a former player of his on the Hayward high school rugby club. He told us that Willie had died of two caps to the chest at 1:30 am while he sat in a parked car with some friends. He talked about Willie's grieving mother. Isaac told them that they better choose their friends with care or they could end up like Willie.

It was a chilling reminder of what life can be for some urban kids. It's why Warthog management insists that our players perform in school. We want them to have options in life, especially ones that include college and improving their lives.

Tonight was about a lot more than rugby. Thank you Isaac for bringing this brutal message to us.

Warthogs Prepare for Huge Sacramento Tourney

The Warthogs are training hard, three times a week, for the Kickoff Classic in Sacramento on Saturday, January 30, 2010. This is likely the largest youth rugby tournament in the country, boasting about 50 teams including national local powers Jesuit, Lamorinda, etc. The Warthogs look pretty good but still need continuity in personnel to really achieve something special this season.

As one of the coaches I am always thinking how to make learning rugby simple. From having played the game for 20 years or so I have boiled it down to these key points:

1. GO FORWARD AT ALL TIMES
2. PROTECT THE BALL--YOU CAN'T SCORE IF YOU DON'T HAVE POSSESSION
3. MAKE YOUR TACKLES, ESPECIALLY THAT FIRST ONE
4. "FEED THE SPEED," FIND THE PLAYER MOVING AT PACE. CONVERSELY, NEVER PASS TO A PLAYER STANDING STILL
5. BEING ALONE, I.E. "ISOLATED" IS A BAD THING ON THE RUGBY PITCH
6. PLAY FOR TERRITORY AND ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO PLAY FROM INSIDE YOUR OWN 22-METER LINE.
7. "GOOD TALK" WINS GAMES. TELL YOUR TEAMMATES WHERE YOU ARE. WHO ARE YOU MARKING ON DEFENSE?