coach

Recent posts

Benefit to help Haiti

Fundraising efforts for Haiti have brought in millions to help out after the earthquake last week.

South Dakota State basketball coach Scott Nagy takes a little different approach to fundraising, and will coach his games this weekend barefoot to raise money and awareness of the country’s turmoil. You can text “shoes” to help raise the money Nagy hopes will buy 2,000 shoes for a child in need and earthquake relief.

Anything to help out the effort.

S. Dakota State coach will go barefoot for Haiti

By CLIFF BRUNT
AP Sports Writer
INDIANAPOLIS — The earthquake in Haiti has personal resonance for South Dakota State basketball coach Scott Nagy, and he plans to coach barefoot this weekend to raise money and awareness for the deadly disaster.

South Dakota State head basketball coach Scott Nagy sits barefoot with his daughter, Naika, at the school in Brookings, S.D, on Dec. 6, 2008. The earthquake in Haiti has personal resonance for Nagy, and he plans to coach barefoot this weekend to raise money and awareness for the deadly disaster. Nagy's adopted daughter is from Petionville, near the quake's epicenter, and he hasn't been able to contact the girl's birth mother since the disaster last Tuesday. Nagy said 6-year-old Naika is aware of what happened, and he struggled to explain the situation to her.

Nagy’s adopted daughter is from Petionville, near the quake’s epicenter, and he hasn’t been able to contact the girl’s birth mother since the disaster last Tuesday. Nagy said 6-year-old Naika is aware of what happened, and he struggled to explain the situation to her.
“She’s very intelligent and very bright,” he said. “She doesn’t say a whole lot, but I know it’s heavy on her heart.”
Nagy said he has tried not to burden Naika with too many details, but she heard about the events at school the next day. He had no choice but to explain further after images of the destruction were shown during a televised NBA game.
“At first, she thought everybody was dead in Haiti,” Nagy said. “I told her that most of the people lived. She said ’so, four people died?’ I said ’more than that.”’
On Saturday, Nagy will coach barefoot as part of his effort to help collect shoes and money for earthquake relief in Haiti through Samaritan’s Feet, a charitable organization based in Charlotte, N.C. The Jackrabbits will play Oakland (Mich.) in Brookings, S.D., and Nagy’s goal is to help collect $30,000 and 2,000 pairs of shoes.
Nagy has encouraged fans to text “shoes” to 85944 so $5 can be added to each person’s cell phone bill to buy a pair of shoes for a child in need. Donations also can be made at Finish Line stores, or at the organization’s Web site.
Members of the South Dakota High School Coaches Association also will coach barefoot this weekend in Naika’s honor.

South Dakota State head basketball coach Scott Nagy.

Nagy said he visited Naika at her orphanage in Haiti in May 2005 and left overwhelmed by the struggles the people there endured. Four months later, the Nagys adopted her. He said it will be a challenge to rebuild a nation that already was extremely poor.
“This is a news story now, and I know it will go away, but this is going to be a long, long term thing for the Haitian people to recover from this,” he said.
Samaritan’s Feet has had operations in Haiti for more than four years, said spokesman Todd Melloh. The organization first became involved with college basketball when IUPUI coach Ron Hunter coached barefoot two years ago. More than 300 coaches, including Nagy, joined the cause last year.
Now, Nagy is even more motivated to participate. He said going shoeless for a few hours will be a minor inconvenience.
“I like to stomp,” he said. “I can’t do that. My feet hurt bad enough after games. Honestly, once the game gets going, you don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about it. It’s a good way to remind people that there’s other things going on that are a heck of a lot more important than just basketball games.”
The text number 85944 is a general number for Samaritan’s Feet, but donations from the 605 area code specifically will go to Haiti.
————
On the Net:

http://www.samaritansfeet.org

Filed under: barefoot, basketball, coach, Fundraiser, Haiti

Winning one for Coach

It was the ending that Aplington-Parkersburg wanted as it won 30-14 over rival Dike-New Hartford Friday in its first game since coach Ed Thomas was shot and killed in June. Watching the game on ESPN showed just what the team and its coach’s loss means to the town of Parkersburg, Iowa.

Emotional game for Iowa team honoring slain coach
By LUKE MEREDITH
AP Sports Writer
PARKERSBURG, Iowa  — An Iowa high school football team, playing its first game since their coach was killed, ran onto the field Friday through a 75-yard tunnel formed by hundreds of former players.
Emotions ran high at a pre-game ceremony honoring Ed Thomas, who coached Aplington-Parkersburg High in northeast Iowa for 34 seasons and was named the NFL’s High School Coach of the Year in 2005. He led the Falcons to a pair of state titles and sent four players to the NFL.
“We lost a very good man. A man of great faith, a man of great character,” Aplington-Parkersburg superintendent Jon Thompson told a packed house at Ed Thomas Field. “He worked with student-athletes, and he tried to make them people of good character so they could carry those ideals on into the future.”

Aplington-Parkersburg High School assistant football coach Todd Thomas, left, walks off the field with his brother Athletic Director Aaron Thomas after their school's game against Dike-New Hartford, Friday, Aug. 28, 2009, in Parkersburg, Iowa. The school is playing it's first season in 35 years without coach Ed Thomas, their father, who was killed in June when he was shot in the school's weight room.

Aplington-Parkersburg High School assistant football coach Todd Thomas, left, walks off the field with his brother Athletic Director Aaron Thomas after their school's game against Dike-New Hartford, Friday, Aug. 28, 2009, in Parkersburg, Iowa. The school is playing it's first season in 35 years without coach Ed Thomas, their father, who was killed in June when he was shot in the school's weight room.

Among the players bursting onto the field was senior lineman Scott Becker, whose older brother is accused of walking into the high school weight room in June and shooting Thomas during offseason workouts. Mark Becker, 24, who also played for Thomas, is charged with murder, although his lawyer has claimed he isn’t mentally fit to stand trial.
Scott Becker received a warm reception during introductions; no surprise to his mother, who said Friday that the community has “done nothing but embrace us, support us and pray for us.”
“We couldn’t stay living here if we didn’t have the community’s support and my family’s support and my church’s support,” said Joan Becker, who attended Friday night’s game with her husband, Dave.
Reminders of Thomas and his legacy surrounded the game, which Aplington-Parkersburg won 30-14 over rival Dike-New Hartford.
The practice field fence where scores of kids learned the game from Thomas was decorated with plastic red cups spelling out “Coach T. Faith. Family. Football.” The Falcons, like many Iowa teams this fall, wore helmet decals reading “FFF ’09,” in honor of the words often spoken by Thomas and the logo was painted into the grass on a hill above an end zone. Some fans wore T-shirts reading “Wear’n Red in Memory of Ed.”
Team commitments kept former Falcons Aaron Kampman of the Packers, Brad Meester of the Jaguars, Detroit’s Jared DeVries and Denver’s Casey Wiegmann from attending Friday night’s game, which ESPN broadcast nationally from the small town of Parkersburg, about 80 miles northeast of Des Moines.
“Obviously that program means a lot to that town,” Meester said earlier in the week. To have them on national television like this and having them honor coach Thomas, this will be the first game that he won’t be there since I can ever remember. I know it’s going to be an emotional time, but it’s going to be a way to remember him.”
Friday night’s opener was, for the second straight year, an emotional debut for the Falcons.
Thomas spearheaded efforts to get Ed Thomas Field, previously named in his honor, ready for the 2008 opener after a tornado leveled about one-third of Parkersburg, killing nine people in the area and badly damaging the stadium.
Thomas believed fixing up the “Sacred Acre,” nicknamed for the reverence he showed for the field, would serve as a rallying point for the community’s rebuilding efforts.
A new $19 million high school, which Thomas also was instrumental in helping design as the school’s athletic director, opened Monday.
“We’re trying to get back to normal,” said Parkersburg resident Dennis Ihde, a neighbor and close friend of Thomas. “The tornado certainly affected everybody physically, emotionally. But this really hit us emotionally. It’s just one of those things that, you can’t replace him. But we’re praying for the kids that they do their best. Ed would want that.”
Thomas made sure to leave one reminder of the tornado, a twisted metal sign reading “Falcon Country” that barely survived the storm. The Falcons ran out onto the field Friday night under that sign, though for the first time Thomas wasn’t there to lead the charge.
The team’s coaches walked slowly to the sidelines, many of them teary-eyed. Ed Thomas’s two sons — Aaron, who took over as the school’s athletic director, and Todd, who returned as an assistant — shared a brief handshake just before kickoff.

Filed under: coach, Football, Prep