Assistant Coaches

[bigfatty]

Who is the most valuable assistant coach in the WCLL?

[WaterBoy]

I don't think there's anyway to know this- they're basically unsung heroes of the team.

I would also suggest that the only people with enough knowledge to answer this question well would be the coaches themselves, and I doubt they're going to comment on each other in this forum.

Of course people will tend to think the ones they know are almighty, but that may be simply because of a lack of familiarity with all the coaches/ assistant coaches around the WCLL.

[John Hughes]

I think that it’s important to recognize what defines a great assistant coach. In my opinion, a great assistant coach embraces the players in a way the head coach can’t. He must also protect the head coach by being the strictest of disciplinarians when necessary. Obviously, he has to be a great position coach as well as a creative coordinator. He has to be able to center the head coach when the head coach is on tilt, and he has help make adjustments when the head coach is stumped. He has to help recruit, scout, and find ways to motivate his players to play at the pinnacle of their abilities. He creates a sense of family – father to some players and big brother to others. And he has to do it all in another person’s system, putting up with ridicule on the sideline when his players let him down and without an ounce of public credit when his players rise to the occasion.

Mike Dewan is the best assistant coach in the WCLL. He embodies what makes a great assistant. He knows his players better than any other assistant coach in the WCLL and he uses that closeness to challenge them to be the player HE thinks they can be, which is a hell of lot better than anybody else thought they could become.

For those that know him, Mike is excitable and a little unorthodox but no players in the WCLL play harder for their defensive coordinator than the UCSD Tritons. He is a solid tactician, he gives creativity a new definition, recognizes potential in fields where others wouldn’t farm, and builds players from scratch. UCSD hasn’t attracted great high school talent and two seasons ago, coach Dewan took a group of ragtag teenagers and turned them into a group of smart, hard working, hard checking, defensemen with good handles and a capacity for complex defensive schemes. No one cares more for his players than Mike and he uses that affection to get from his players what others couldn’t.

Over the past two seasons UCSD has gone from a relative unknown to a viable team in the hunt for a bid to the National Championship Tournament. UCSD’s will to win and spirit to achieve more than anticipated starts with Mike Dewan. He has the singular vision that UCSD can do what no one else thinks UCSD can do. He is the heartbeat of our team and instills a passion for victory that will help our players be successful in whatever they attempt.

Mike Dewan embodies love for the game, love for his players, dedication to his team, loyalty to his head coach, and Mike Dewan is the most valuable assistant coach in the WCLL.

[Replay]

I am sorry I do love Mike Dewan, and I think he is great for the game, but Jon Miller the assistant coach of UCSB is the best assistant coach in the USLIA. His rapport with the players is excellent and his off field devotion to the team and his defensive scheeming have won back to back titles, something that no other team has done. Also, as the defensive coordinator last year his team held opponents to the lowest number of goals in USLIA tournament history by far. Year after year as players graduate and coaches move on, the one consistant thing about UCSB is its tough defense and Jon Miller at the helm.

gotta run will write more later

[WaterBoy]

I'll never forget the first thing that I ever heard Mike Dewan say. He said, "If you're going to play defense, you have to know how to play basketball. You also have to listen to hip hop."

Goes right along with what Coach Hughes was saying about knowing his players well.

I wasn't going to comment on UCSD's coaches, since I figure I might have a bias for being in the neighborhood, but I have noticed that UCSD has taken great strides with it's staff- clearly from the top on down. I've been around a while, and I can affirm that since Coach Dewan has been in charge of the Tritons defense, it's been a completely different beast.

[laxdork]

Bryan moore . . . i think he has been in college for roughly maybe 8
years, now thats dedecation to a program.

[dtrain34]

Those that know me must think hell has frozen over for me to not agree with those giving me praise (usually I do enough self-promotion of my own greatness to cover things).

And although I appreciate everyones comments, I have to agree with Replay's assessment that Coach Miller at SB is the best.

All sport's (especially at this level) come down to winning, and ultimately, it comes down to winning championships. SB has always had great defensive talent; going back to Dave Winnaker and his crew, and well before that. But before Miller's arrival, the program never played so disciplined and worked so well collectively. This current defense is also a great compliment to SB's possession oriented offense. Like a great boxer, what impresses me the most is Miller's ability to identify an opposing offense's single most important threat, and then adjust the defense accordingly for that week to neutralize it. Just keep working at a cut over an eye and eventually a person can't see.

And in two years, no one has found a way in the championship games to be able to see a weakness.

Again I appreciate all that was said, and although I am unbelivably proud and appreciative of my guys and how far they have come since we showed up there a few falls ago, this isn't much of a discussion until something great is accomplished.

And just as a last two cents...you can't really measure an individual assistant on a staff. You can only measure the entire coaching staff as a whole; and either way it is all going to come down to how great the head coach is anyways. But if we were speaking of coaching staffs as a whole, the most prepared and best one i have seen this year in all the games I have watched or been apart of, hand's down was Coach Jaffe and his staff at UCLA.




P.S. If we were just talking about middie substitutions, than Bryan Moore would be at the top of the list.