Zach Winn
Sports Editor
As the year winds down, Keene State College is working with their student athletes to improve the athletic department by getting as much feedback as they can.
“We give them all evaluation forms and it’s basically the same thing you do for classes,” Athletic Director John Ratliff explained. “We’re just trying to assess everyone’s coaching ability and see how it reflects and how they work with the student athletes.”
The process has been around since before Ratliff got here in 1995 and is employed by most schools in the Little East Conference. The blue evaluation forms ask everything from the coach’s fairness and respect to the achievement of the athlete and team’s potential. Each category has a ranking from ‘poor’ to ‘excellent’ and it gives athletes and opportunity to assess the program they dedicate so much time to.
“I think it’s good for the coaches to see what kind of stuff the players liked and didn’t like,” senior basketball player Ryan Martin said. “And sometimes the players won’t say something to the coach’s face so they can say exactly what they feel on the evaluation.”
The anonymous forms offer a way for the athletes to critique the coach without worrying about any repercussions.
Senior lacrosse player Nicole Curry says the confidentiality is crucial.
“Yeah it’s definitely important because I think some players are too shy or too quiet to talk about a problem they’re having so they can write it on a piece of paper and still get their word out,” Curry said.
Graduating athletes also do a more in-depth face-to-face interview with Ratliff about their four years at the school. It allows them to talk about how the school has changed since they first got here.
“I think it helps hearing it from a senior just seeing how different it is on your fourth year as opposed to your first,” Martin said, “Because they talk to the coaches too, so personally for me I’ve seen a lot of changes in my four years.”
Martin brought up the recent Rutgers basketball scandal where a video was leaked of the head coach verbally abusing and throwing basketballs at players as an example of an incident that may have been prevented had the players had a chance to speak up. Although he made it clear KSC has never had an issue quite as severe as that, he said he has seen improvements in the basketball program as a result of the evaluation forms.
“Last year there were some basketball evaluations where players said they wanted more individual coaching time to work on their game and workout,” Martin said, “And then this year the coaches made a great effort to make sure they worked with us on individual skills, like ball-handling, more.”
Ratliff said most of the time the forms lead to little adjustments like that.
“We look for any consistencies that would indicate problems or issues we need to address, so if one or two students make some similar comments that might raise a flag,” Ratliff said. “But the majority of people are only positive.”
Ratliff mentioned one instance last year where multiple people expressed a desire for team practices to be more organized.
“We talked to the coach and he made the necessary adjustments,” Ratliff said. “The bottom line is we’re just trying to improve the program.”
Ratliff also said there have been more serious changes made as a result of the evaluations.
“We had a coach we did let go based on the fact that evaluations weren’t changing and they were overwhelmingly negative on the coach’s ability to coach,” Ratliff said. “The big thing is they weren’t getting any better after we talked to him.”
The athletic department has always encouraged self-improvement. The bottom line is the evaluation process is a good way for the students to give constructive feedback.
“Criticism is hard for anyone to take, I even give one to the coaches so they can evaluate me,” Ratliff said. “The whole thing is you want to be a better coach or administrator or teacher, I think you learn something every year.”
Zach Winn can be contacted at
zwinn@keene-equinox.com