West Virginia has placed an emphasis on teaching and the many ways to accomplish it this spring.

That means not only instructing players, but hopefully that spills over to the players being able to teach some of their peers as well. But in order to get to that point, coaches must first identify the ways that the information can best be retained.

And because people learn in so many different ways, that means trying a series of techniques to get the information across to those that need it.

“Anyway you can get a guy to retain it is crucial. So how do we retain information? We’ve got to hit all modes of learning because we’ve got different teachers and learners,” coordinator Gerad Parker said.

It’s a natural role for many coaches considering the fact that so many of them possess a teaching degree and got into the industry in order to instruct and reach their understudies. And the separation due to the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed many of them to further sharpen those skills.

“We had to do all of this over zoom. You have to find ways to reach guys starring at them on a screen and make sure they’re retaining it,” Parker said.

A day in the life of coaching essentially involves a coach first putting the information on the board and then letting the players install the play. That will be done in several different ways and with different modes of learning in order to hit on all the different spots.

Then comes notetaking and checking those notes in order to see if they have gathered the information from each session. The final written aspect comes with tests and quizzes to see how that data is retained and how it could be applied on the field.

“Then we take them out on the field and walk them through it,” Parker said.

This is the daily routine that is done in order to get the message across and then players are able to watch themselves on film to see how they perform each task. During that process, players can observe how they handle each assignments and then can learn to improve upon it.

It’s a long line of progression but once that must be done in order to ensure that players go from learning a play to putting it in action on the field.

“It’s one of the best professions in the world to have a teaching background,” he said.

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