Rise in social media a blessing and a curse

It turns out you can change football in 140 characters or less.

One of the biggest differences in prep football over the past 17 years has been the rise of social media. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Vine are just a few of the websites that have revolutionized many aspects of life — not just football.

Not surprisingly, coaches are conflicted about the impact of social media.

“It’s both a blessing and a curse,” said Joel Vincent, the Jackson head coach. “We established a Jackson football Twitter account which has just been an absolute godsend.”

Vincent uses the team twitter account (which can be found at @JHSwolvesFball for those curious — or anyone playing the Timberwolves in the coming weeks) to relay practice times, workout schedules and reminders about paperwork, among other things.

“I’m about to send a tweet out that’s immediately received by 100 guys,” Vincent said. “Young kids are all over social media, and that’s stuff that they pay attention to. It just means more to them than a P.A. announcement over the morning announcements at school or something like that. So as a coach, organizationally, it’s really helped us.”

The Jackson coach said the success rate of getting the messages to players on Twitter is “extremely high” and significantly beats the alternative method he used when he first started coaching.

“Twenty years ago, you handed out a sheet of paper at the beginning of the first practice of the week that had a schedule for the week,” Vincent said. “What you found was the kids would come out of the locker room on Monday after practice was over and there would be 15 pieces of paper on the ground. The kids didn’t even take it with them. Later in the week the kid would be late for a meeting and the kid would go, ‘I didn’t know about the meeting.’”

Joe Cronin, who established a Twitter account for Cascade football when he coached the Bruins the past two seasons, set up an account while he was an assistant at Lake Stevens. His colleague and friend, Lake Stevens baseball coach Rodger Anderson, had one and used it to get information out.

Cronin quickly saw another benefit to following his players on Twitter.

“When they’re doing stuff, I can see it,” he said. “I can follow their Twitter. Our kids were good about it. If you saw something going on, you could look into it.”

With college recruiters, opposing players and fans from all over following players on Twitter, coaches frequently stress to their athletes the importance of being careful about what they post.

“I think kids have to be really careful,” Cronin said. “We used to talk about Twitter and just make sure kids were being appropriate. Especially if we were playing Everett or Jackson in a rivalry game, when it gets a little heated.”

Vincent stresses a similar philosophy to his players.

“Where I would say it’s a curse is I would say sometimes kids fall into talking to or putting stuff out over social media leading up to games,” the Jackson coach said. “The kids talk to the opponent and the opponent is talking back.”

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