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.
Momentum. What does it mean? How does it affect a game? When does it show up and how do you know that it has arrived? How do you get deeply immersed in its currents? Can it be sensed? And if the answer is yes then, as a coach or player, what do you do when momentum (or “Uncle Mo” as it is commonly referred to) rears its head and takes over a game or a critical point of a game that changes its entire complexity allowing a team to secure a win or absorb a very difficult loss?
Momentum is defined as: “The quantity of positive motion that an object has” or in sports it’s defined as: “A team that has suddenly gained impetus of a period of time and used that period to its advantage.”
This definition is one that really hits home for many of us simply because we’ve seen both sides of it as players or coaches and have experienced first-hand the after affects of how momentum can influence a game. After having the opportunity to view several of our area teams this past week, I saw teams battling to secure victories and on the verge of having successful nights only to see “Uncle Mo” show up and propel teams to unbelievable comeback wins.
In the coaching world, you commonly hear the phrase “They got on a run” or “We were able to use a 16-4 run to push us ahead and secure the win,” by coaches trying to explain something that – at times – is unexplainable.
As coaches or players – or fans for that matter – you can sense when your team is on a run and it can be exciting for fans and the team that’s on that run. All you want to do is ride the wave until it’s over, as it can be breath-taking to see, fun to be a part of and fans, players and coaches leave discussing it. But, if the run is being achieved against you it can be demoralizing, frustrating and no matter what you do to try and stop it, nothing seems to help. So you just hope that your team can withstand the sudden impetus and have enough time to get your breath again.
In the early part of this season, we’ve seen teams from both sides of the spectrum lose games thought to be secured and teams win game that many thought they had no chance to win.
That’s what makes what I do so much fun as I have the tremendous opportunity to see our coaches and programs in northeast Indiana compete at the highest levels each night and trust me when I say this, “Uncle Mo” will show up for each and every team this season, hopefully more towards victories than losses. But greet him when he enters and your team wins and usher him out when it leads to a tough loss.
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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