Keith Edmonds is a 32-year veteran of teaching and school administration from Fort Wayne. He coached boys high school basketball as an assistant at Snider High School, North Side High School and was the head boys basketball coach at Elmhurst High School for 12 years, advancing to the Class 3A State championship in 2003.
Edmonds describes his passion as working with and advancing young people towards their goals and development. He enjoys teaching and training boys and girls in basketball and skill development and have made that his newest mission. He is married with two sons, ages 35 & 34.
Throughout the 2019-2020 high school basketball season, he will share his thoughts as our ‘coaches corner’ column takes things ‘Courtside.’
As I sit and think about the start of another exciting year of hoops season here in Northeast Indiana, I think that as we take a look at area teams and see who will be the area’s best as far as winning conferences and advancing in the state tournament, it’s important to keep a watchful eye on which teams have players that understand their “roles” and what they bring to each team on any given night.
The teams that are truly successful have players that are willing to sacrifice their own individual acclaim for the betterment of the…TEAM.
Being a former head coach, I met with each player – after our varsity team was selected – and discussed what I felt their most valuable contribution would be to our help our team accomplish our goals. Now granted, this wasn’t always a conversation that players wanted to have with me simply because they had their own agenda. And usually that focused around scoring more points from the previous season. But I felt that players needed to understand that though it was important to have individual goals, it was equally as important to have team goals.
That meant that there was going to take some sacrifice of their goal of a 25 point per game average – though they only averaged 4ppg in the previous season – to assist in helping our team compete on the highest level every game.
The truly great teams have an understanding that if they are going to be able to survive in, what is my opinion, the toughest region in the state of Indiana, the agenda has to be set and roles clearly defined to achieve the BIG picture, which hopefully will be having an opportunity to play in Bankers Life Fieldhouse for a State Championship in March.
With this being said, roles take time to settle into and we have to allow the season to mature as teams begin to identify themselves before we truly recognize which programs and players emerge as the teams whose players understand what is expected of them and the responsibilities that come with those expectations. It should be a fun year on the girls and boys side and judging from what has occurred on the ladies side already.
2019-2020 northeast Indiana basketball should be exciting to see!
Courtside with Coach Edmonds will appear every Monday during the prep basketball season at Outside the Huddle. These opinions represent those of the writer. No opinions expressed on Outside the Huddle represent those of any of our advertisers.
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