What’s next for Girls Basketball at Grand Island Senior High?
Kathryn Langrehr, GISH Girls Basketball Coach, and Chris Ladwig, GISH Activities Director, join The GIPS Cast to unpack that very question.
Why?
The short answer is mainly due to numbers. Back in October, with the season set to start, GISH didn’t have any Junior or Senior student athletes set to go out for the sport.
The long answer, as with most things, is much more nuanced. But truly, the decision — as difficult as it was to make — was 100% rooted in a commitment to providing meaningful, competitive, fun, and life-enriching experiences for students. And at the end of the day, sometimes you have to be innovative and — yes — even make a painful decision in order to move forward.
While the initial decision may have felt like a shock, the intentionality towards supporting student athletes has given the players and coaches reason to be proud today and optimistic about the next few years.
Because the Islanders aren’t going anywhere — they're building for the future.
Transcript from the English episode may be found below.
#WeAreGIPS
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
INTRO 00:00
This is Grand Island Public Schools podcast, and these are our stories. We are learners. We are educators. In teaching hearts as well as minds, we are 10,000 diverse voices, and we're changing the world together, one classroom at a time. These are our stories. We are GIPS. We are GIPS. Somos que efe ese. We are GIPS. Somos GIPS. We are GIPS. And this is The GIPS Cast!
Mitchell Roush 00:31
Welcome back to The GIPS Cast! A conversation based podcast exploring the voices of Grand Island Public Schools in Nebraska. I'm your host, Mitchell Roush, Communications Director here at GIPS, and I am always grateful to bring to you new stories from all corners of our district, because here we're driven by our mission of every student every day a success. What's next for girls basketball at Grand Island Senior High. That's been an understandable question that we have fielded this year. You see, earlier this school year, Gish announced that we would not be offering a varsity or JV schedule for this season. Why? The short answer is mainly due to numbers back in October, with the girls basketball season set to start, Gish didn't have any junior or senior student athletes set to go out for the sport. Now, the long answer, as with most things, is much more nuanced, but truly the decision, as difficult as it was to make, was 100% rooted in a commitment to providing meaningful, competitive, fun and life enriching experience for our students. So at the end of the day, sometimes you have to be innovative and yes, even make a painful decision in order to move forward. I sat down with Coach Katherine langre. She's the head coach of the girls basketball team at Gish, and Chris Ladwig, the Gish activities director. And I asked them the same question, what approach are we taking to strengthen the future of girls basketball at Grand Island Senior High? And I think you'll agree, while the initial decision may have felt like a shock. The planning and intentionality geared towards supporting our student athletes has given us a reason to be proud today and optimistic about the future. The islanders aren't going anywhere. Here's our conversation.
Chris Ladwig 02:43
Chris lodwig, Activities Director at Grand Island Senior High.
Kathryn Langrehr 02:47
Kathryn Langrehr, Head Girls Basketball Coach at Grand Island Senior High.
Mitchell Roush 02:52
Thank you so much for being here, both of you! I really appreciate it. I know that this is something we've wanted to do for a little while, is just get you both on the mic and talk about what we're doing to take care of the girls basketball program, take care of our students and provide some high quality opportunities here. So Mr. Ladwig, I want to talk to you first. This might seem kind of like an obvious question, but it's a great opportunity to share with our listeners. You're the activities director for the high school. What is the purpose of Gish activities, and why do we seek to give extracurricular opportunities to students? Basically, why do you do what you do?
Chris Ladwig 03:27
Well, first and foremost, we want to give education based activities and opportunity in our program. And so, you know, we want to make sure that we got high quality coaches talking with our kids in an education based world. So all of our kids are getting opportunity to go out and do whatever they want to do. That's the best part about what we have. It's not just one or two things here at Grand Island Senior High, we have multiple so every kid has an opportunity here if they choose to. So it's a great place to be. It's a fun place to be and and, you know, girls basketball is just one of those many puzzle pieces that we have that makes grand Allen Senior High such a great place.
Mitchell Roush 04:10
Yeah, along those same lines, like it's the reason we're here is to talk about girls basketball specifically. And I know that you've been with the district for a while, but you've been sitting in the director's seat, this is your first year, and you probably didn't anticipate having to make the hard decision that you had to make this year, but there was a lot of reason behind that. And so do you want to just kind of share with our listeners again, remind them what was the decision y'all made around girls basketball varsity this year and talk to me a little bit about how you got here?
Chris Ladwig 04:40
Yeah, it's been a it's been a long conversation. This isn't something that we just did as a knee jerk reaction. We took the better part of six months to have these conversations and and people may think that while you started these conversations long time ago, was this really in the. Play and and to be honest with you, it really was not in play.
Mitchell Roush 05:04
Right? No one wants to, like, cancel a season, right?
Chris Ladwig 05:08
But the big thing was, is we got out, we talked to our coaches, our coaches came to us. We had great positive conversations. We weighed, weighed a lot of the positives, a lot of the negatives. And then on top of it, you talk to kids, yeah, and you get to hear what they're feeling. You get to hear what they're thinking. And you work with your kids every day. You develop relationships with them. And more and more conversations came out. And was it something that you know you always want to do? Absolutely not like you said, but it's something that we felt was in the best need for our program and what we needed to do to go forward and to build this thing the right way. And we're focused on us. You know, I know that. You know people will say other stuff about what's going on out in other communities and around the world, and it's not that's not us. This is grand Allen Senior High. We're focused on us, and we're focused on finding a solution for us, and and we're going to continue to battle that and tackle it, and and, you know, our coaches have been phenomenal. Our kids have been amazing. And when you talk to them day in and day out, and you go into the practices, and you go to the games and the work that they're putting in, putting in, you can see exactly why the decision that was made was the right decision, and we're going to continue to grow with that and build on it, because our kids deserve it, and our coaches deserve it, and our communities deserves it.
Mitchell Roush 06:39
I appreciate that viewpoint quite a bit. And obviously you and I have talked about this a lot too, off Mike, and one thing that you have been consistent on in this process is our priority is our students, our staff and our community. That's it. That's our focus. And I appreciate that and your leadership in this, in this decision process, because that's, that's what the focus has to be. And then, as you mentioned, this wasn't an easy decision, but you're doing it because we believe it's the right thing to do on behalf of our kids. So Coach Lang rare, I want to, I want to continue this part of the conversation with you as well. So you know, Mr. Ladwig obviously mentioned that this has been an ongoing conversation, not just with him, but with you and your staff and your athletes. So I just want to hear from you, what is this process and getting to this decision been like for you, and how do you feel about this?
Kathryn Langrehr 07:27
You know, one of the things collectively is I always come back to is the health of the community and the health of our school and learning how to get to the next level in an environment where you can actually step and take a step up and take another step up and take another step up. Yeah, and back to, like, the declining numbers of the juniors and seniors. This has been ongoing for at least seven years, if you look at the actual track history. And so that's back to, you know, making an environment and creating an environment where collectively, we're lifting it together. It's not going to be a coach, it's not going to be a player, it's not going to be an administration, it's all of it functioning together as a team. And so as far as you know, if the answer to what's the tough decision, the tough decision is doing what's best for everybody, and everybody is those riders that you consider on your bus. And so, you know, I would say that it wasn't obviously taken lightly. And if, over a two year period of struggle, we're still dealing with some of the basic things that make us a team function at the highest level, then we have to scale it to where it's reachable. And so, you know, we're winning the little things now, yeah, the little things actually will then in the end, it takes care of itself. And so it's not about wins and losses. It's not about the can or can't. It's about the hard decision to lift it like as a group. And so, you know, kind of back to, you know, what's the purpose of this? The purpose of all games is to learn life's lessons. Yeah, and if you can't learn the game because you're too consumed with the fact that you're not even at a close enough level to learn the game, yeah, it's hard to actually do it. So the tough decision for not offering varsity was for the fact that if we have no juniors and seniors who are no longer interested in playing girls basketball, and there's a declining number of female basketball athletes, we have to make an environment where it's the place you want to be, not the last place you want to be.
Mitchell Roush 09:35
That is such a great way to frame it. You mentioned at the beginning of your comment there coach that this, this issue of declining interest in girls basketball has been around since before you you got to lead the program. So you want to talk a little bit about what are you seeing right now? You Is this your third year with the team?
Kathryn Langrehr 09:56
Yeah. I mean, this is now the third season.
Mitchell Roush 09:59
So there's your third season here. And so talk to me a little bit about what you're seeing and what and what you're hoping to to accomplish this year, as it's kind of a transition year.
Kathryn Langrehr 10:08
A place where they want to be. I mean, there's a lot of big things that we're trying to win. Mr. Ladwig and the activities office has a great platform of like a united front offered from our main office. And then our program, we have our three pillars, so communication, and we're winning that all the girls are communicating all the time, discipline, which means you got to do all the little stuff. You got to put your jersey in the right spot. You got to put your jersey on. You got to be running up and down the court, kind of like the no excuses attitude. And then, you know, truly, the, you know, play hard, play smart, and play together. And by doing what we're doing, we have a space where we can learn the game. And if you can learn the game at the level that you should be learning at, then the next year you learn it at a higher level, and the next year you learn at a higher level, and all of a sudden you're back to where you should be, because kids want girls, young women want to be there.
Mitchell Roush 10:57
You sound like a coach. The concept of continuous improvement in setting goals and wanting to get to those goals. So how you have a freshman and reserves teams this year, right? So how many girls you have on those and on those teams, and what is your focus this year for getting them to improve?
Kathryn Langrehr 11:15
So we have technically a sub A sub freshman team. So we have a total of 34 girls playing. We only have six, seven sophomores, and then we now have a full and what I consider a full freshman class. You know, you got to have these authentic, real conversations with girls as you're building relationships with you got to think about that in big picture. Okay, so let's say you got 24 to 25 girls in every class wanting to play the game of basketball. Now that brings 100 kids in the gym. You and I both know you can't keep 100 so then what happens is you have true classes get through you have some girls that play on varsity that are oddball levels, from freshmen through seniors. You have some girls that are playing JV, which should be mostly juniors, who are not at a performance level for varsity, right? And then you have a sophomore class who's able to play reserve, and you have a freshman class that's true freshman. So you should eventually keep anywhere from, I mean, this would be, obviously the perfect system. You should have 12 to 14 on freshmen, 12 to 14 on reserve, 12 to 14 on JV, and then a true 10 to 12 on varsity. And that takes time. And so this is back to who we have planned for us. Right now, we have a bunch of really raw athletes who, because of the fact that they knew to this year that they would not be moved up to varsity, are willing to learn the game.
Mitchell Roush 12:36
So that's huge for a second. Like again, that developmental piece, right? You've got young student athletes who love the game and are interested in playing and wanting to get better, but part of their interest with being young athletes is they didn't want to be forced to play varsity if they didn't feel ready for it, right? Am I hearing that correctly? Yeah.
Kathryn Langrehr 12:55
And for the first two years I was moving up some freshmen that it was, it was a lot to ask out of them, yeah, and it's not just a little to ask. It was a lot. It's a lot emotionally, it's a lot physically. And then a lot of all of these girls, you know, I'm a hopeful individual, so at some point I'd love to bring you, know, the stud, elite basketball athlete, back to this class A environment. But right now for all of them, it's fair to say that basketball is their second love, or even third, and that's okay. That's an okay place to admit but so asking a freshman who is not their premier sport to play varsity minutes and support you know, another multi sport at facet is a lot. So I'm grateful to our administration and the district for taking and in my opinion, a leap of faith that hopefully, in the end, will reflect the the community aspect of lifting it together and and building it for for years to come.
Mitchell Roush 13:54
Absolutely; and thank you for for sharing that. You know I mean that that's just the reality of the situation, but it sounds like you're approaching this with, again, intentionality and a vision and investing in developing the student athletes that you have in the right way.
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Mitchell Roush 14:54
So I do want to ask you one more question. Coach again, talking about big picture, kind of down the road. I know access to the game is something that's really important to you, because obviously you want to take care of the athletes that you have right now in the high school, but you also want to try to do everything that you can to get young girls in our community and in our schools excited about basketball. And one thing in particular that you've been doing the last couple of years is the on the go clinics at our different elementary schools. Would you be willing to share what that is and kind of the motivation behind that?
Kathryn Langrehr 15:27
Truthfully, that's just a I like to call it sprinkles on a cake. It's not really going to be as impactful as it needs to be for reps, as we pursue a class, a opportunity of basketball. It's just very low level to be fair instruction on the game of basketball. But nobody runs into a dance competition able to do a hand backhand spring or a flip unless they've been in gymnastics. Nobody goes into a volleyball clinic if they've never touched a volleyball and knows how to have proper hitting form, nobody goes into a softball clinic and can learn pitching right away. So it is. There's gyms at every elementary school, and those gyms can be used. And so my biggest lift with that was, I want to see who is one when approaching taking over, I want to see who is in our elementary schools. That was the first why, and then the second why is, let's get a ball in their hands, and I can get my face in front of them, at a minimum, for a long standing effort, we as a staff are having more serious conversations with some of our athletes who don't experience that as elementary kids and happen to be six foot by the time that they're seventh graders. Yeah, and so that's back to the dropped ball, in my opinion, is creating a sixth grade, some type of environment for that. But this is back to you said, you know, getting the whole community, or, I don't know if you use the word equity, I can't remember access to the same thing the game, but access to the game includes parent involvement, and so you know, all of us are busy, and all of us have places to be, and that's back to taking a pause and remembering that we do all of these things for our families and for our kids because We're doing them for our families and with our kids. Yeah. And so that's back to the kind of the art of of life is trying to balance all the things that we serve at while at the same time being willing to serve our own kids. And so, you know, I guess my ask, and as we continue to try to make our community and GIPS, better, is that we continue to encourage just the love of an actual game. It's a game, yes, no different than going to the nursing home with grandma and playing chess, but we also want to be doing that together, so just showing students that it's important to have have us all in the gym. And I mean, I weirdly encourage parents to come watch our practices if they can want to. Yeah, totally. So I know that sounds kind of maybe taboo, but at the same time, you can't give away what you don't know. So you know that that was my real reason. I guess the big three for the on the goes, was one, getting know the kids. Two, knowing the spaces that we have. And then three, it's just a game teaching it.
Mitchell Roush 18:22
Absolutely, Mr. Ladwig, along those same lines, I know that you have a lot of passion for community involvement and community opportunities for for kids of all ages. So kind of piggybacking on what Coach shared. What are you seeing in the community in terms of opportunities for kids? What are you seeing from the community in terms of support for the program, and what do you hope to see in the future?
Chris Ladwig 18:46
I think we got, you know, there's a lot of hope for the future when you speak about that. But currently, you know, we we offer a lot of camps in the summer. We do as much as we can for our kids and all of our activities. You know, last year we had a show choir event that some of our kids put in for put on for our kids. Yep, we had multiple sporting camps for our kids. We even provided free opportunities for kids outside of the normal opportunities. So you know, we have it at the middle school. We just had a conversation with our middle school ladies about what, that looks like this summer. So, you know, those, those conversations never die, and we want to continue to build those, you know, and in turn, you know, I want our community to buy in on that, you know, you look at the new, new thing that our community is going to be looking at on the north side of town, yep, you know that. That's a small piece of growing this community in activities and giving a platform or a springboard. So to say, for these kids to be successful and what they want to do, it might not be anything special, but for them to go out and play a little bit of pickleball, that's part of, yeah, that's another. Activity that, for us athletically up here, helps those kids become more dynamic in what they want to do. And so, you know, I'm a big proponent of multi sport athletes and doing multi activities. You see it up here a lot. Our kids put in a ton of hours, day to day, week by week, year by year, because they love doing what they do. And I can't thank our parents and our guardians for giving those kids the opportunity to do those things, because it's a lot of time away from families. Yeah, so that support from them, and that help from them, and on top of it, our community gives back a ton to our activities, in fundraising and all of that. And so it takes a huge community for these kids to have opportunities. And so, you know, it's the small things that we're doing around here, and we're going to continue to offer those things. And I'm excited to kind of see that sports complex that the city's working with to see what it looks like and how it grows, yeah, and, and you look around, you know, just around Grand Island, every community is growing in those directions. And so, you know, I don't want to leave, be left behind. And so working got to continue to communicate those things and see how we can grow them and and support our kids as much as we can so they can be successful as they grow up.
Mitchell Roush 21:29
I love that answer again, about all the different opportunities that can be brought to kids. That's that's what it's about. So Coach, I want to come back to you, what's your vision for the girls basketball program going forward? Because I know that you've told me that you're here, you're doing this. So what, what do you envision for the for the future here for girls basketball?
Kathryn Langrehr 21:53
Sustainable youth programs with parent and player involvement. Again, it's back to you know, Mr. Ladd mentioned the camps for the kids and middle school opportunities. And that's back to that sustainable learning how to sustain that of the youth programs, whether it's the three on three middle school girls opportunity in the fall, a five year plan to attract the hyper competitive youth basketball player, yeah, obviously the girl, I mean, sure, I hope the boys are able to do the same thing, right? You want both programs to do well, but the hyper competitive, the lover of basketball, to try to, you know, attract her and her family, back to coming to Gish, creating high expectations for a program, kind of back to, I might not go as extreme as like the coach Carter vibe, but learning to lift all the little things, which, in the end, pay off and are long standing. So having a high expectations program, and then just going back to our pillars, you know, consistency, discipline, and I mean it, but playing hard and playing smart and playing together, and if you learn how to kind of do those things, as far as a vision and making a space to where, you know, this is back to, you know, what's your vision for the girls basketball to attract every high level athlete? I mean, that's what we've done this year, yeah, in the freshman class, and we've sustained the ones in, you know, most of the sophomores. So taking the raw athlete, maybe a little earlier than seventh or eighth grade, ninth grade, but taking the raw athlete and getting them to see themselves, you know, doing this for right now and and, you know, creating, giving them a dream to go reach for.
Mitchell Roush 23:34
Mr. Ladwig, coming back on the on that community piece, hearing that vision for the program, and wanting to get to kids earlier, and wanting to help the community feel more empowered around investing in girls basketball. What? What do you what's one thing you you want to say to the community, to say, like, how can they support how can they be a part of this? What? What? What do you want to share with them?
Chris Ladwig 23:59
The one thing for me is, just giving your kids that opportunity. You know, I, I see it every day, our kids battling through different things that are going on in their lives and and working through things and and every family is different in in what they're trying to do. But you know, at that, at that elementary level, when they're when, when a kid comes home and wants to try something, give them the opportunity, yeah, because you never know what's going to come out of it, and and whether it's it's sports, whether it's band, whether it's show choir, I can go on and on. You know, we talk about pickleball, right? I can go on and on.
Mitchell Roush 24:42
All the things, all the things, hey, there's chess club here at the high school, right?
Chris Ladwig 24:46
And you look at what our community has out here right now, for, you know, tennis courts, you can do a lot of different things on a tennis court. Yep, you know, you can think of soccer, tennis. I can think of doing different basketball skills. Yeah. I can. On and on, just letting our kids go out have fun, and give those the opportunities and put put a ball in their hand, or let them dream a little bit, and they're gonna grow up and do something that's productive for them, which is awesome. And you know, I kind of think of my own kids, and you know, when they go out there and they have a productive struggle in whatever activity they're doing, or whether they do something really well, and they walk off whatever they're doing and have a smile. Yeah, it's just, it's gratifying to see it. And it's the same thing when I'm up here as as our activities director, and I talk to kids, and they walk into my office and they have that face, and you just, they need to get something off their chest, and they walk out and they say thanks, and they shake your hand, because that's how much they appreciate the opportunities that they're given. It just, it's it explains why we do what we do, and the time that we put in, that we put in, and it's a great thing. It's a fun thing, you know, and I know that it's happening in all of our schools. It's not just here, which is awesome, which is a great thing, you know, we're focused on that and and make sure that our kids are just given those opportunities to grow and be successful and have a ton of fun with it.
Mitchell Roush 26:17
It's a good word. It's a good word. So I'll say with you, Mr. Lattewick, as we kind of wrap up here, I ask everybody, the guests on this podcast, this question, because I'm fascinated by the answers, and I think our listeners appreciate hearing the variety of viewpoints. But what is one thing about public education you want people to know? Because you've obviously chosen the career of being in public education and that matters to you. So what do you want to share with the community in that regard?
Chris Ladwig 26:42
The one word that comes to my mind when you talk about public education is opportunity. We've talked a lot about different things on this on this podcast, and we could, we could do an eight hour podcast over these conversations about different opportunities that we have at Grand Allen Senior High, I walk into a lot of different schools. And you know, when I go to LPS ops, you walk into a school and you just see opportunity and and every school is different in their own way, but, but the opportunities that kid kids have today to be successful is is endless. And you think of here, when we, when we look at things, we've had three different groups so far this year be created because kids wanted to have an opportunity for different groups. That's cool. That's public education, yep. And so, you know that's that's a big thing to me, and so I can go on and on, but the opportunities that we have up here at ground Island Senior High are amazing, and that is why public education is is what it is.
Mitchell Roush 27:53
Yeah, love that opportunity. It's a good word. Coach. I want to come to you and ask you the same question, what? What what do you want people to know about public education? Why is it important?
Kathryn Langrehr 28:04
It's back to you know, I like to teach life through analogies. I don't know if it's always the right way to go, but we're gonna go with, let's do it. I comment with my players all the time that they wake up and they're already making, you know, I call it Free Will choices, but they're already making choices. You're gonna grab your toothbrush with your right hand. With your right hand, you're gonna grab it with your left hand, and you're gonna hit your alarm once. You can hit it twice. And you know, life is full of choices. And so one of the things, back to kind of piggyback off of what Mr. Ladwig was saying, is that, you know, it at at an environment where you're you have so many different choices. You know, with public education, this is back to what makes, you know, public education, or GIPS, you know, the place where you should be, yeah, and, you know, I hope that it's back to, you know, really thinking about just all of the many opportunities which I like, but also then the why and figuring out what is your child and your family's why. And if you boil down at the end of the day that it's the extracurricular activities, the education platform, you know, whether it's robotics, the AP classes, you know the art classes, you're evaluating all those different things. And so at the end of the day, why public education is you figured out your why. And so, you know, I try not take for granted the relationships that I'm able to, you know, have here, with the athletes that come into contact with me, the students that I run into serving me still in the community that are like, I haven't seen you five years, you know, like, those are great things to look back on and to be thankful for, and and so, you know, why public education? I guess my next question for that not to counterbalance it, but why not? Yeah. And so just figure. Know what your "why" is.
Mitchell Roush 30:00
Love that. Anything else you'd like to share about your role or the program?
Chris Ladwig 30:05
I just want, I just want to say thanks to you, Mitch, for, you know, always looking out for our kids and and given opportunity for and I'm gonna come back to that work. That's what it's about. Yeah, it's an opportunity for us to tell our story. You know, it's not always roses, and that's okay, but we're given an opportunity to talk about what we have to offer and what we can do. And so I appreciate you know what ground Public Schools does for us and Mitch, the platform that you give for our kids to be that option out there. So we appreciate everything that our that you guys do, and we're gonna continue to grow it and build it. And as I say to our kids every day, on when we talked about our announcements, just a "Go, go, G-I!".
Mitchell Roush 30:50
Awesome! Well, thank you. It is my pleasure to be here and to hang out with y'all and to see all the cool things that you're doing to take care of kids. So thank you both for being here, for sharing your voices, but more importantly, thank you for your commitment to our kids and our students. Y'all are great people, and you're doing the right thing, and we've got a lot of exciting things coming up in the future, so there's a lot to be excited about. So thank you so much. Thank you, again to Coach Langrehr and to Mr. Ladwig for not only sharing their voices, but everything that they do every day to inspire and empower our student athletes. They're doing good work here. And of course, thank you listeners for joining us here on The GIPS podcast. We're grateful you joined us on this journey. If you enjoyed this show or this episode, we really appreciate it if you would rate or review this show on your favorite podcast platform, it will help other people discover us along the way. And of course, don't forget to go to gips.org; that is www.gips.org our district website, your hub for resources, information and news about Grand Island Public Schools, we'll be coming back at you soon with some more great stories from our district!
Outro 32:09
We are GIPS. We are GIPS. Somos que efe ese. We are GIPS. Somos GIPS. We are GIPS. And this is The GIPS Cast!
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