The inspiration for this project came from the fact that I had basically already been doing my project for the last two years but I hadn't been counting it as such.  I joined the staff after the spring of 2016, not long after SUU had won it's first Big Sky conference championship, which I had been a part of as a player, so the program was one that I was very familiar with.  After having gained lots of experience as a coach after two seasons, and another Big Sky championship, I decided I would use my experience as my EDGE project to show how valuable this time has been for me.

​

With this being my third fall camp as an undergraduate assistant, there weren't very many challenges that I didn't already expect but something that I did face was simply fatigue.  For coaches, the days during fall camp are very long and can begin to feel very monotonous since you are essentially doing the exact same thing for three weeks with a slight change in your schedule on the fourth week. Even though it does begin to feel like you're reliving the same day over and over again, it was an experience that I enjoyed very much and having our players and coaching staff made it easy to not fall victim to the monotonous feeling that begins to creep up on you as camp goes on. 

​

While my project made the day-to-day things easier for our full-time coaches, I think the group of people that benefited the most from my project were the student-athletes.  One issue that I had had in the years prior was that I had no experience with defense as I had been an offensive player.  I often felt unsure about what we were doing so I would always redirect our players to the other coaches, which was not the case this year.  I was able to help teach the athletes, especially the younger players who were to the team.  Another benefit that I believe that they got was having a coach who was in their same shoes not too long ago.  As far how fall camp goes, not much has changed between the 2015 season and now, so I was able to empathize with the athletes, especially since I am still very close in age to them (in some cases, even younger than them).

​

Thanks to my time in previous years, I had a much better understanding of how our defense operated. Because I knew that, one of my personal goals for this fall camp was to now be able to take that knowledge and able to teach it to new players that had just joined the team.  While I had always known that different people take in information in different ways, this fall camp help me learn how to better recognize what degree of involvement each individual needs.  I learned pretty quickly that some players need to be walked through different concepts pretty thoroughly while others you could give them most of the general information and they would be able to figure the rest out for themselves pretty easily. While I learned how to better turn what I knew into information for others to take in, I also learned that even though I have come a very long ways from when I first began as an assistant, I still have plenty that I can learn.

​

​