GREEN BAY — Contact days are pivotal for high school coaches so that they can interact with their players during the offseason, but how much interaction can they have? NBC 26 caught up with Preble high school football head coach Brad Boockmeier, who is navigating contact days in just his first month at the helm of Hornets.
“Our goal in these contact days was to install what is going to be our bread and butter plays and I won't share any secrets,” Boockmeier laughed.
Boockmeier has been around the Preble football program for a big part of his life. From his playing days as a star tailback to year seven as a part of the coaching staff but this year, he’s a first year head coach.
“Boockmeier, he’s a great head coach and we love him,” said senior wide receiver Braylon Schadt.
The new head coach has only been so for a little over a month and he’s now using contact days to set the standard of what he wants his program to be.
“It only took one and half practices before I was about to say something and a senior stepped up and he said it for me and I was like, ‘good, perfect’, we’re starting to get that stuff established. That’s the biggest thing having these contact days.”
But what are contact days? Well coaches can only be around their players for a short amount of time from the end of school year to july 31st according to the WIAA.
“The WIAA allows you 5 official coaching days where you can actually get into your sport,” Boockmeier said.
That doesn’t mean coaches can’t be around their players to help them grow. Outside of those five days, they can help their athletes improve in other ways.
“You can run weights, you can run speed and agility stuff, right, but you can’t get any sports specific stuff, so that allows us 5 days to do that,” said the first year head coach
Boockmeier makes sure to structure his limited contact days, so the players can take what they learned and continue to improve on their own.
“What I like about that is, when we teach them a passing concept on day one, well when we open up the field for open field, right, we can’t coach, but they can run the concept on their own and our quarterbacks can lead the show,” he said. “It just gives them a little bit of structure without actually giving them structure.”
For his players, contact days are beneficial so when fall camp begins they’re ahead of the curve.
“Learning the little things, knowing how to run, where to run,” said Schadt.
It’s not just focusing on the little things, it’s also coming together as a cohesive unit, which is:
“Very important,” Schadt said. “It helps us, team bonding is a big thing, but just getting ready for the season.”
According to the WIAA, a violation for most of the rules they have, doesn’t have a specific penalty tied to them, but the they could impose 9 different penalties according to their website:
“The WIAA has the authority, however, to impose penalties relative to rules violations, such as 1) suspension of membership for not more than one year; 2) probation for not more than one year; 3) denial of participation in Association tournament program; 4) denial of any area of Association services and benefits; 5) monetary fine equal to Association expense incurred in any investigation and actual reimbursement of costs resulting from the violation; 6) forfeiture (team sports) of contests won by school or (individual sports) of points/places won by individuals; 7) loss of opportunity to host WIAA tournament events for not more than one year; 8) loss of conference affiliation; 9) loss of eligibility for athletes involved.”
