Masters in Coaching Podcast- Episode XIII

Tim Cates talks with West Covina High School Athletic Director Brian Barnes about overseeing athletics during the pandemic and his journey to also teaching a class at Concordia University Irvine.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
He was a math teacher for fourteenyears, fourteen years coaching baseball, football,
in golf, the last six yearsathletic director at West Covina High School.
He's Brian Barnes and he joins usnow Episode thirteen of the Masters in
Coaching Podcast. Let's go, Hieverybody. Tim Cateson, Welcome to another

(00:22):
edition of the Masters in Coaching Podcast, Episode number thirteen. We appreciate you
listening here on iHeart Radio. Ourguest this week, athletic director at West
Covina High School. He's been doingthat for six years. He got his
master's degree in Coaching Athletics Administration fromConcordia University, Irvine. He loved it
so much he's now teaching a classat Concordia University, Irvine. He spent

(00:45):
fourteen years as a teacher before becomingan athletic director, teaching math, pre
algebra and ap stats. He wasa coach for baseball, football and golf
at West Covina High School. Heis Brian Barnes and he joins us now.
Brian, how are you doing?Thanks for coming on? Really good,
Thanks Tim, Thanks for having meon. Excited to talk a little
bit about the program. And WescovineHigh School absolutely. First off, how

(01:08):
are you guys doing at Westkovina HighSchool through this pandemic and this this fall
semester. Well, I think I'vebeen really lucky to work with a proactive
superintendent and principle, and we werewe were getting back on the practice field
a lot earlier than most schools inLa County, which has been a big

(01:29):
positive for our athletes and our andour coaches just to be able to re
establish that contact and start trying toget back into some sort of normalcy.
But it's been a struggle, Ithink, just like everybody else is witnessing
across the board. How are youguys able to do that? I know
a lot of private schools, charterschools were able to do it. The
public schools have been a little slowerto do it, but you guys have

(01:49):
been ahead of that curve. Whatmade you guys successful in doing that earlier
than a lot of other schools reallyjust being proactive about viewing the proto calls
that we're existing from other counties.As soon as we saw other counties starting
getting started with with sports, tokind of dove into anything, we eat

(02:10):
our hands on, put together agood plan that we were able to follow
and make everybody happy and get backto work safely. Have you guys been
able to get all your athletic programsfor the most part back out on the
field or in the quarter outside workingout for the most part. For the
most part, yes, we've gota handful that still haven't started up working

(02:31):
out yet, but those are sportsthat typically are getting started a little bit
later anyway. But for the mostpart, we're up and running across the
board with like you said, outdoorsocial distance workouts. How important it has
it been, do you think,Brian, to get these kids back working
out because school has done socially distancewise now via Zoom and different online platforms.

(02:55):
How important is it as an educatorto see these kids back out there
doing things athletically, doing things asa team, socially distanced of course,
but out there doing something to getstimulated again. It's been huge that that
was the first piece of feedback thatI got for my coaches after the first
week or so that we had gottenstarted. It was just when the when

(03:16):
our players showed up to practice thefirst day, they were kind of down,
not quite sure about themselves and whatto do just kind of I mean,
it's it's a really difficult time.So we were kind of seeing that
with our athletes. But after beingout for a week or two, you
can already see that they're more positive, they're more energetic, they're just happy

(03:37):
to be out doing anything that isclose to being normal, because, like
you said, is with school beingdistanced and then being away from their friends
and not really having any social interaction, this is a really tough time for
them. Brian Barnes, athletic directorat Westkovina High School, is our guests
here on the Masters and Coaching podcast. Now, certainly you can't go to

(03:57):
a class or learn how to preparefor a pandemic because it's only happened once
in the last hundred years here inthis country. But as things started to
progress and the shutdown orders kind ofgot lifted and you started kind of game
planning what's ahead. As an athleticdirector, what was your plan did you
start formulating different plans and scenarios inyour mind and what kind of what kind

(04:17):
of mindset did you go to asan ad Well, I think that for
sure, coaches and athletic administrators areprobably the I would say the best suited
to handle something like this. We'reso used to dealing with curveballs on the
fly that we get we get thatsense of perseverance and resilience through jobs normally.

(04:39):
But for me, I was tryingto find as much information as I
could just about how things were happeningsafely in other areas, whether that was
summer schools in different counties or summercamps in different areas, and looking at
how they were doing things and howthey could say we do them that way.

(05:00):
Once we got the approval to getout there were we were kind of
prepared because we had a plan tofollow protocols that were modeled after after other
things that we're opening. Brian,let's get into you a little bit.
For twenty years, is an educator, fourteen years teaching, six years now
as an athletic director. You gotyour master's degree. You're now teaching at

(05:24):
Concordia University, Irvine. They're Mastersin Coaching Athletics Administration program. But for
you, what led you down thisroad to get into being an educator,
being a coach, and ultimately gettinginto athletic administration. Well, I think
I like to share with our studentsthat I feel like I was pretty lucky
in high school. A lot ofstudents when they graduate high school, they

(05:44):
don't really know what they want todo. But I had a plan A
and a plan B. So Igot into drafting when I was in high
school and actually made some plans forone of our security guards and got as
a house addition and built for him. But so that was how I ended
up at cal Poly Pomona. Formy undergrad was as an architecture major.

(06:06):
I really wanted to get into thatand quickly realized that it wasn't the thing
for me. And luckily for me, I had a plan B. It
was it was teach math and coachsports, coach baseball and football. It
was always kind of in the backof my mind. My mom's family's all
educators, and that was something thatI had heard pretty much my entire life,

(06:30):
was was that someday, you're goingto make a good teacher. And
so that kind of led me tochange my major to math and kind of
focus my sights on my long termgoal of being a high school athletic director
and teaching math. And you gotto that goal the last six years an
athletic director. If you kind ofwent back and looked at what you've done
during your tenure. What's the thingyou kind of really put your stamp on

(06:53):
as far as what you've been ableto accomplish. I think that if you
if you asked the other other coachesand probably the students about me. The
big thing, for one is asI'm highly organized, so I help our
coaches stay organized and make sure thatthey can spend more time focusing on what
they want to focus, which isactually coaching the sports. I try to

(07:15):
make their lives easier in that aspect. The other big thing that we've focused
on over the last few years isacademics, really really trying to be stringent
and strict with our athletes about makingsure that they're taking care of their work
inside the classroom and being good people. That way they can enjoy the privilege
and the and the enjoyment of beingable to play sports for the school.

(07:41):
I want to further that a littlebit because now that we're in social distancing
and learning via you know, zoomand Google meet, is that something that's
harder to keep track of? Areare you having to track down student athletes
and making sure they're they're going totheir zoom classes and making sure they're still
eligible for when sports do come back, they're ready to play and like you
said, maybe move on to thenext level and play in college. Yeah,

(08:03):
it's definitely definitely more difficult. Ithink that that was one of the
big pushes for us to get backin person, was just to be able
to talk to the students, beable to have the coaches check in with
them and see how classes are going, and get a little bit more face
to face time because when you're whenyou're doing things via in an email or
a group message or whatever, wehave to communicate with them when that we're

(08:28):
not in person, it gets reallydifficult. And then multiply that by however
many teachers you need to contact tosee what the students can do or what
they can get help on and things. Things just move a lot. Communication
just moves a lot slower when youdon't have any in person contact. I
think this is a good time totell our listeners about Concordia University or Vines
Masters in Coaching and Athletics Administration program, the nation's number one athletics graduate program.

(08:52):
They've got more students enrolled every termthan any other program of its kind
and it could be completed one online, face to face, or a unique
blend of both. They have fourseasonal start dates winner spring, summer,
fall, so start thinking about whenyou want to enroll. Start time is
convenient for your schedule. You cantake one course at a time and customize

(09:13):
your curriculum. It's that easy toget that master's degree. Just put your
foot forward and do so by goingto CUI dot eedu slash coaching that CUI
dot edu slash coaching. You canchoose between Masters of Arts in Coaching at
Athletics Administration or Masters of Science inCoaching and Exercise Science. And again you
can finish these programs in just overa year, about fifteen months. For

(09:35):
more information, again go to thewebsite CUI dot eedu slash coaching. Brian
Barnes our guest, the athletic directorat West Covina High School. Brian,
you made that jump to get yourmaster's degree. You're already athletic director,
but you went to Concordia University,Irvine. Why Well, we actually started
doing some work with Tom White,one of the founders of the program,

(10:00):
a few years back, to setup an annual Coaches Academy for our district,
so basically professional development opportunity for coaches. We do a little bit of
kind of overall program management, nutsand bolts things for them, but a
lot of it is character development forthe players. And Tom helped us get

(10:20):
that set up and helps us eachyear find speakers and talk about formatting,
and in working with him and startedto meet a couple other people from Concordia.
When I decided that I wanted topursue getting a master's degree, I
definitely wanted to look into coaching andathletic administration and it was really easy to

(10:41):
see that Concordias stood out as asone of, if not the best programs
out there for that. And nowyou're teaching, tell us about the class
you're teaching. I just started teachingethics and sport and and that that was
one of my favorite classes going throughthe program am just because it's it's really

(11:01):
meant to put into perspective the factthat there's different there's different sides to every
argument, and there's a whole lotof gray area, especially when it comes
to ethics, and things are notblack and white. A lot of it
comes down to motivation, which wedon't know and I really like the class

(11:22):
because it it really focuses in onthose ethical dilemmas that we come across and
really is I think, really bigon building empathy, which is huge in
the coaching world because we need Wedon't know what's going on in our athletes
world on a day to day basis, and if we're not at least asking

(11:43):
and trying to find out what's goingon when they're having some issues, I
think that we're doing a disservice toour student athletes, especially in these crazy
times where kids are listening sure,learning from a distance and struggling just to
get through that and cope with thatas teenagers, with everything else they have
to go through in life as sixteenseventeen, eighteen year olds the thrown in

(12:03):
pandemic and not be around their friends. And you talk about a perfect time
for somebody to dive into that andlearn more about that, this would be
the time right now. Oh yeah, yeah, definitely, And that's I
mean one of the one of themost powerful things that we have as coaches
is the fact that we're developing peopleand we have that opportunity to ask them
how they're doing and to check inwith them and see if they didn't need

(12:26):
any support from us. Brian asan educator, as somebody who took that
step to become an athletic director andthen took that step to get your master's
degree and now teaching at Concordia UniversityIrvine and their masters and coaching Athletics Administration
program, what would you tell thosemaybe listening out there right now, a
teacher or a coach, or somebodylooking to take that leap, that next
step and further in their career andfurther in their education or further in there

(12:48):
their teaching program. What would youtell them right now about getting started?
How easy it is to start pursuingthat master's degree. Oh boy, I
would definitely say that the program hasbeen great. I think that I learned
a lot of positive just lessons throughthe classes and through the program in general.

(13:11):
But more than that, the thingthat I really liked about it was
every single class that I took wasreally applicable to the job that I was
doing. So current athletic administration administratorscan can see the program and count on
being able to apply some of theirprojects directly to their jobs right now.

(13:33):
That was something I was able todo and take advantage of, and then
coaches that are are people that arethinking about getting into coaching or athletic administration.
It's really a good way to builda foundation of how you want to
do things and what your focuses andyour philosophies are going to be before you
before you jump in and kind oftake that plunge. Brian, I appreciate

(13:54):
the time, continue success. You'redoing great things at West Covina High School.
All of our fingers crossed and hopefullywe can get through this pandemic here
and get these kids back into classroomsas soon as possible, get these kids,
boys and girls back on the field, back on the courts, back
out there doing the things they're supposedto be doing as fifteen, sixteen,
seventeen, and eighteen year olds.Thank you so much for your time,

(14:16):
Brian, again, thank you foreverything you're doing as an educator out there.
Thanks Tim Pray. All right there, he goes Brian Barnes, athletic
director of West Covina High School.It's been doing great work during this pandemic
in his student athletes back on thefield, back on the court, back
out there getting active in preparation forwhen sports do return, Well, that's
gonna do it for another edition ofthe Masters of Coaching podcast. Thank you

(14:37):
so much for listening. Stay safe, stay healthy, wash those hands,
wear your mask, and most importantly, keep striving to be the best until
next time. So long, everybody,