Tom Fedor/The Gazette New Life Christians Joe Stopyra drives to the hoop during the title game of the Tuscarora Shootout on July 12. New Life rarely competes against public school teams in Frederick County.

Ready to end the deliberating, Connor Browns parents walked around their 6-acre Damascus property and discussed their sons future. The question at hand: Would he attend Broadfording Christian Academy or New Life Christian School?

Connor had long planned to attend Broadfording in Hagerstown, where he could play basketball with an older cousin. For years, they'd discussed playing together on the same high school team and then college and NBA teams. New Life Christian in Frederick was, well, closer to home.

As his parents walked, Brown nervously shot on his outdoor basketball hoop. Eventually, they returned with plans for Browns sophomore year after spending two years at Bullis.

So, which one is it? Brown said.

Its the Rams, they said, referring to New Life's mascot.

Initially, Brown was a bit upset not to play with his cousin, but now a rising senior, he and his brother Austin, a rising junior, have helped lift New Lifes basketball profile.

Were just working hard every day trying to build this program up, make it something that around Frederick County that kids want to, Oh yeah, I want to go to New Life, Brown said.

New Life was 21-9 last year, winning the Mason Dixon Christian Conference regular-season title and reaching the Division 1 Maryland Christian School Tournament for the first time. With the Browns and Seth Myers a rising senior who transferred from Oakdale before last season returning, New Lifes ambitions are higher than ever.

We never want to be a Montrose or anything like that, Bryant said. We just want to be a competitive team within the county.

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> SOUTHERN INDIANA I am a basketball coach.

Thanks to John Bradley back in 1992, I was able to figure my purpose in life. Coach Bradley was the Henryville boys coach at the time and he asked me one day if I would be interested in coaching the freshmen that year. I told him I had to think about that. At age 23, that was going to be a huge decision.

Did he actually want me to be in charge of a group of young men? Wow ... I just didnt know.

I thought about it and decided I would give it a try. (Before I go any further, I want to apologize to those guys because I was a complete and total idiot that first year, and well ... for a few years.)

Even though I had figured out what my purpose was, I still didnt know how to really do that purpose, if that makes sense. For anyone who thought I was intense or ridiculous the last few years, they probably would have called the police those first one to 10 years of my coaching career.

I knew what I wanted to do, but I didnt know how to do it. Many of those players from those years have thanked me for all I did, and I usually apologize because I could have done better and I am not talking about just on the court.

That gets me to the last two years. As I started to understand my purpose even more, I was starting to understand that purpose had to lead to more than just coaching basketball. I wanted to reach more and different people through my faith. Last fall, I applied to Athletes in Action and a couple of other organizations and was accepted.

That acceptance and the process helped me to decide to resign as boys basketball coach at Henryville.

I knew there was something that I should be doing greater than what I was doing. So thankfully to some, I resigned.

I am not putting down being a varsity basketball coach. So many men and women are doing a job that is under the microscope by many who wouldnt even consider coaching an elementary team. Asked by friend Matt Denison the other night if I was finished being a head coach, I told him I just didnt know. I will be coaching in the near future, but at what position and where is still unknown to me.

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HUNTER: What’s your purpose?

Jeff Fisher took a year off from coaching, and traveled around the country, and saw the world. He had fun during his break from the daily grind and pressure of the coaching life. His No. 1 highlight was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa.

When Fisher returned to coaching, he signed on to make a more imposing and hazardous climb. Fisher took over the Rams, a woebegone franchise that from 2007-2011 lost more games (65) over a five-season stretch than any team in NFL history.

It is a franchise in flux, with owner Stan Kroenke making fans restless and fearful of a move to Los Angeles. You could say there are more attractive situations in the NFL. On the field, the Rams have averaged three wins over the last five seasons. Away from the field, fans are being beaten down by LA rumors.

Welcome to St. Louis, Coach.

The assignment isn't for the faint of heart. Mike Martz reached the Super Bowl, lost in an epic upset, then slowly cracked. The last two full-time head coaches to give it a go were buried under a rock-slide of losses. Scott Linehan and Steve Spagnuolo came to Earth City with smiles and optimism. Their combined record as head coach: 21-63.

When Linehan and Spagnuolo were fired, it seemed like the merciful thing to do. The unrelenting punishment of the job turned two good men into paranoid, uptight wrecks.

This description does not match a rested and ready Fisher.

"I love this game," Fisher said. "I have great respect for our owner, and I made a commitment to him to get him a trophy. And I'm going to start working towards that."

That would be the Vince Lombardi Trophy, handed to the yearly Super Bowl champion. Lombardi? Most fans would be happy with 8-8 for now. But as his first Rams' training camp gets under way, Fisher has no desire to lower expectations. You won't hear him talking about reconstruction zones and five-year plans.

"Every training camp I've started as a head coach or assistant, it felt like my first," Fisher said. "This one feels like it's my first [ever] training camp. You go into it with a willingness to learn, with energy. With willingness to put a team together that has high expectations. That goes out expecting to win every game."

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Bernie: Fisher takes steep climb in stride

Jim Carlen lived a rare life -- coaching three major college football teams and winning the Heisman Trophy.

The roars could be deafening at the University of South Carolina when the coach ran George Rogers right into the record books.

By the time he got to Hilton Head Island in the 1980s, Carlen had been running with the big dogs since 1951, when he left Cookeville, Tenn., for Coach Bobby Dodd's Georgia Tech football team. While Carlen was there, the Yellow Jackets shared a national championship, won 31 games in a row and brought home trophies from the Orange Bowl, the Cotton Bowl and two Sugar Bowls.

Carlen was comfortable as the center of attention as head football coach at USC, Texas Tech and West Virginia University.

But there were no cheering crowds in the church halls of Hilton Head where Carlen pecked away at his rarest achievement: monumental blood donation.

When blood drives were held at Christ Lutheran Church near his island home in Shipyard Plantation or in the Fellowship Hall at First Presbyterian Church, Carlen was always one of the first in line.

The Island Packet ran a front-page story when he hit the 19-gallon mark of lifetime donations in August 1988. He'd been giving since Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta called the 18-year-old freshman, asking for a pint of his A-negative blood. He gave until his health no longer permitted it.

Carlen died peacefully Sunday after a long illness at age 79.

His blood-donor card wasn't immediately available at his Columbia home Tuesday, but a friend of the family said Carlen might have become one of the nation's top blood donors.

It was a quiet act that got less attention in four decades of consistent giving than a single Saturday-afternoon touchdown. One of Carlen's closest colleagues in Beaufort County told me he never heard the coach mention blood donation.

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USC coach known as a rare hero at quiet blood drives

NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. -- Hubert Davis always wanted to coach but had never thought much about actually doing it, and that was the case all the way up until the morning on which he was offered a job at his alma mater.

Roy Williams called and asked Davis to drop by the office.

He said he needed a favor.

"I thought his favor was going to be asking me to change the date of my Christian basketball camp that's been held at the Smith Center the past 15 years," Davis said.

"But I told Hubert," Williams added with a smile, "that I needed a little bigger 'favor.'"

And that's basically how Davis went from being an ESPN analyst to a North Carolina assistant -- one who spent this weekend evaluating prospects at the Nike Peach Jam. He watched games attentively, scribbled notes on pieces of paper and mostly blended in here on the Georgia-South Carolina border while adjusting to his new life that will require he spends more time teaching basketball than talking basketball. More important, it'll let Davis spend more time near his Chapel Hill home than he does on campuses away from it, and that was a crucial factor in his career-changing decision.

Yes, Davis liked his ESPN job and being on television, but he never needed that job or the ego trip that comes from seeing your own face on TV. What Davis said he needed (and wanted) was to be able to spend more time with his family while staying involved in the sport, to be able to make an impact at home and on the court. So when Williams called from North Carolina -- a place where Davis played from 1988 to 1992 and helped the Tar Heels win two ACC titles -- and presented such an opportunity after Jerod Haase left UNC to become the head coach at UAB, Davis didn't take long to consider it. He got his wife's blessing and told Williams he would join the North Carolina staff.

Suddenly, home and work were in the same zip code. It's an ideal way for a man who prioritizes things in such a way to work.

"This is a win-situation for my family," said Davis, who had been living in Chapel Hill with his wife and three children for the past eight years anyway. "I was gone five nights a week when I worked for ESPN. All anybody sees is that you get to go on television and talk, but I was going from campus to campus, gone five nights a week. I was gone a lot. But this keeps me home. I'm home a lot more now. I mean, my sons come to practice."

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Hubert Davis leaves TV for North Carolina assistant coaching gig

INSPIRATIONAL coach Donna Hankinson, who helped create the award-winning North East Manchester Hawks Handball Club, has been won BTs Coaching for Life Coach of the Year 2012 competition.

Donna was chosen from over 120 entries for her dedication to promoting the Olympic sport.

She has recently added a string of successes to her name, including coaching the Hawks boys under-18s and girls under-18s teams to national league and cup doubles.

Donna also led Great Britains under-20 womens team to their first World Championships in Poland earlier this year and was a finalist in the Coach of the Year category at the One Future Oldham Sports Awards last month.

Donna said: Im really honoured. This prize is all down to the great people I work with and the amazing youngsters who make coaching worthwhile. We have some international-level players in the Hawks squad, and having the chance to talk to a former Olympic athlete has inspired them to keep training hard to achieve their dreams.

Donna, a sales manager at Turner Bianca in Oldham, helped form the Hawks in 2010 following a pilot project in schools across Oldham, Rochdale and Tameside.

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Donna wins BT coach of the year prize

(PRWEB) July 23, 2012

Holistic Learning Centers. Inc. (HLC) is the only life coaching certification school that offers the HuMethod, a proprietary, clinically proven, results driven training system that, after three decades of research and 15 years of clinical field-testing, has evolved into an empowering life coaching healing modality. Their newest educational video explains how Life Coach Certification students can earn an average of $83,000 per year.

HLCs video explains that Price Waterhouse Coopers, one of the most respected accounting firms in the world, discovered this about life coaches in their 2007 global career research project:

HLCs video shows potential life coaches how they can build a successful, part or full time life coaching practice, while earning a substantial income.

HLC has taken the philosophies of nationally known self-help authors such as Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson and Louise Hay and created a life coaching healing modality that will help certification graduates create a successful life coaching practice.

HLC life coach graduates build a successful referral-based practice and charge over $100 per session by using HLCs life coaching success system that has been clinically proven to create the permanent changes for thousands of HLCs life coaching clients.

Upon graduation HLC recommends that its life coaches charge no less than $100 per life coaching session. Sabrina Rose, HLCs Executive Director states that $100 per life coaching session is fair market value, especially since the national average of the similar industry of massage therapy charges $85 per session.

HLCs video reveals that HLCs life coaching certification graduates combined field experience, which exceeds 50,000 life coaching field hours, has shown that a typical coaching client will register for 30 life coaching sessions. Based on HLCs statistics an average life coaching client is worth $3,000 to the certified HLC life coach.

The video also reveals that HLC approves 98% of Financing Applications no matter what the students credit score. This means almost everyone who applies for HLC financing can receive the professional Life Coaching education that they deserve.

HLC has released their newest video to the public in the hope that it will assist aspiring life coaches in identifying whether or not life coaching is the right path for them. Interested parties are invited to view the life coaching certification video on HLC's YouTube channel or by clicking the video thumbnail in this release.

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Holistic Learning Center’s Newly Released Life Coach Certification Video Features Valuable Information on Life Coaching

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Nebraska coach Bob Devaney is carried off the field after Nebraska defeated Oklahoma 35-31 in 1971.

FOOTBALL

Devaney's tenure gave life to modern Husker era

Big Red Bracket: Vote on Nebraska football culture

* * *

On a cold, gray afternoon the last week of 1961, Carl Donaldson was dispatched to the Lincoln airport.

MODERN ERA OF NEBRASKA FOOTBALL

1972-1981: Winning ways turn to growing pains Osborne, a long-time assistant for Devaney, took over and struggled. He fell victim to Sooner Magic in '76. He flirted with termination in '77 and considered leaving for Colorado a year later. Even when Osborne finally beat Oklahoma in '78, he had to play OU again in the Orange Bowl the Sooners won easily. By October 1981, things were looking bleak. NU was unranked for the first time in 12 years. Then Osborne handed the keys to sophomore Turner Gill. Conference, national titles: 4/0 Winning Pct: .781 (93-25-3) Best team: '78 Worst team: '77 High point: Jim Pillen's fumble recovery in '78 Low point: Buster Rhymes' last-minute touchdown in '80 Best players: Johnny Rodgers, Rich Glover, Willie Harper, Junior Miller, Dave Rimington Defining moment: Osborne receives the news that NU has to play OU again in '79 Orange Bowl

1982-1991: Falling short on the national stage With Gill at quarterback, NU never lost a Big Eight game 21-0, including three wins over Oklahoma. But heartbreaks to Clemson in 1981, Penn State in '82 and Miami in '83 cost Osborne national titles. By '84, the Sooners were beating NU again. Was Osborne ever going to get over the hump? Season after season, the Huskers started strong, but finished weak. From '86 to '93, they lost seven straight bowl games, six against Miami and Florida State. Nebraska had the size and strength to compete, but not the speed. Conference, national titles: 5/0 Winning Pct: .847 (102-20-1) Best team: '83 Worst team: '90 High point: Winning at OU 7-3 in '88 Low point: Losing Citrus Bowl 45-21 Best players: Turner Gill, Mike Rozier, Irving Fryar, Dean Steinkuhler, Neil Smith Defining moment: The failed 2-point conversion in Miami

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Devaney's tenure gave life to modern Husker era

Burke Catholic graduate Emily Stallings, left, goes through drills on Monday. She will likely be one of the key players off the bench when Marist takes on St. Bonaventure on Tuesday night.Photo provided

Times Herald-Record

Published: 2:00 AM - 07/21/12

Emily Stallings has those first-job kind of nerves as she preps for her first basketball coaching job.

The Burke Catholic graduate from Newburgh has accepted the graduate assistant coaching job at East Stroudsburg University in the fall.

"I'm excited to get into the coaching atmosphere,'' said Stallings, who graduated from Marist in the spring.

Stallings has long desired getting into coaching, and Marist assistant Meg Gebbia helped by informing her about a seminar in Denver where would-be coaches would be schooled on the fine points of the profession and make contacts.

"It's kind of like combining two things,'' said Stallings, who got a degree in education. "I've always loved teaching, so I get to combine basketball and teaching together and keep basketball a part of my life.''

Stallings said she's had a lot of positive coaching influences in her life, from Bob Turner at Burke, Al Viani with the AAU and Gebbia and head coach Brian Giorgis at Marist.

"I've had a wide span of coaches, a wide span of personalities,'' she said, "and they've given me good examples of how you should coach. I can choose what I like from different people " and see what works.''

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Burke grad preps for first coaching gig

Colin Hendry has been appointed as first team coach at Blackburn Rovers.

The 46-year old former Ewood Park skipper has been added to Steve Kean's coaching staff ahead of the 2012/13 season and is looking forward to helping his old club and again being involved so closely with the game.

"I'm very excited for myself and my family," Hendry said. "It's a shot in the arm for me. I'm looking forward to it.

"When you've been in the industry for as long as I've been, like a lot of people have, I suppose you're a bit like a fish out of water.

"You keep your hand in as much as you can, I've done a lot of media work, but it's nothing like being involved in the game itself. It's the next best thing after playing.

"I've had offers, one or two from abroad, and it's well versed what's happened in my life. It had to be right, not just for me, but for the family as well."

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Hendry delighted with Blackburn coaching appointment