News and Announcements
Coach Bill Krueger (retired 1996)
Birthday: June 24
Coached at Cameron, San Marcos, Clear Creek, and Clear Lake
State Championship at San Marcos 1965
State Championship at Clear Lake 1989
District Record of 87.4% wins
18 seasons of 30+ wins
coached 39 years
HONORS
National High School Hall of Fame 1997
Texas High School Hall of Fame 1991
Clear Lake High School Hall of Fame 1991
Chosen National Coach of the Year
Texas High School Coach of the Year (twice)
District Outstanding Coach of the Year (29 times)
Outstanding Coach (Houston Metropolitan area) twice
Recognized in Sports Illustrated (twice)
Featured in Sports Illustrated - 1996 "Winningest Coach In The Nation"
Distinguished Alumni Award - Southwest Texas State University
Hall of Honor - Southwest Texas State University
Vice President of Senior Class - SWTSU 1957
Selected All School favorite - SWTSU - 1957
All Central Texas High School Selection (football one year, basketball three years)
Retired as the winningest coach in the nation (1096-250, 81.4% wins) in January 1996.
(See newspaper article on Field House deication on "General Information" Page).
As of November 2010 Bill Krueger is the sixth winningest coach in the USA behind:
1. Robert Hughes - Fort Worth Terrell and Dunbar; 1333-265 (83.4%) in 47 years
2. Morgan Wootten - DeMatha HS, Hyattsville, Maryland; 1274-192 (86.9%) in 46 years
3. Ralph Tasker - Sulphur Springs, Ohio, Lovington and Hobbs, New Mexico; 1122-291 (79.4%) in 57 years.
Four of the top 10 highest scoring teams in U.S. history played for Tasker.
4. Clyde Carlisle - Clarksville Texas, 1103-317 (40 years)
5. Sammie Koudelka - Moulton, Texas. 1101-381 (40 years)
6. Bill Krueger 1096-250; 39 years
Notice four of the top six most successful winning coaches in the nation are from Texas.
You can purchase the national record book at http://www.nfhs.org/content.aspx?id=3230
The Bench Warmer – Unsung Hero, Valuable Asset by Don W
One of the important lessons we should learn along life’s journey is the value of commitment - when to commit, how selective to be, what it means to make a commitment to something, and then the integrity required to live up to an honest commitment. This article addresses the commitment required for the high school basketball player but it applies to any athlete.
There are many hours of hard work and dedication required to participate and excel in any sport. Early on, as a small child, it starts out as fun but over time it also turns into hard work. By the time a youngster gets to high school there are many demands placed on him or her. Their love, satisfaction, and enjoyment of a sport compel them to make it one of the many priorities that must be juggled to be successful.
Becoming part of a high school basketball team requires a serious commitment, a personal commitment that you will strive to do your best while placing the needs of the team above your personal needs. To work together to achieve a common goal that can only be accomplished together and to derive satisfaction and reward from the achievement of the team is a selfless, far reaching objective. It is not just about having fun playing basketball. Some young people learn this sooner than others.
Achieving the status of playing a varsity sport, any sport, in a large high school today is a very significant accomplishment. You have become “the best of the best”. But once you have risen to be among the elite, a new struggle occurs to compete in a more elite circle.
In basketball, as in almost any endeavor, success ultimately depends on a player’s God-given talent, hard work, willingness to sacrifice to achieve the team’s goals, and commitment to the team and one's own objectives.
Most seasons there is a player (or players) who spends most of his or her time at games watching the game from the bench instead of playing in the game. This player is known as a bench warmer. They show up on time for every practice, they work just as hard as anyone in practice, they sacrifice their body and get hurt just as much, but they hardly ever get to play in the game (and they usually never complain). However, without them the team would be incomplete. In practice, the team might not be able to run the drills and learn the precision plays required for the team’s success. Without the bench warmer, his or her teammates are limited in developing their skills to the maximum. It is a mistake to underestimate the value of the bench warmer.
Why does a person do this? There is little or no glory in watching others reap the ultimate rewards of playing in the game. They seldom receive the praise and recognition typical of the team’s more outstanding players. Yet they are there ready when called upon. They are there because of the love of the game and because they made a commitment to their team which they are fulfilling. This speaks loudly about a young person’s character. For many of them, the thought of quiting the team never occurs.
There are few valid acceptable reasons for a person to quit a team after the school year starts and the team is formed. Personal tragedy, personal hardship, and relocation come to mind. By the time one reaches an age to play a sport in high school, one who will quit a team after the season starts, because it is no longer fun, or they do not get to play enough, or they do not get to start, or they dislike or disagree with a coach, is turning their back on an important commitment they made. To do this at any age requires close examination. To do this at an early age is very unwise. These people are called “quitters”. Show me someone who will quit the team for these reasons, and I will show you someone who very likely may be a quitter throughout their lives.
In all the years of watching high school basketball there have been very few quitters on the varsity level at Clear Lake High School. In almost every case, after just a short time, the person had strong regrets about quitting the team, regrets that will be with them for the remainder of their lives.
Generally, bench warmers tend to be successful in life. They have demonstrated an ability to make an honest commitment and they have the integrity to follow through and live up to their commitments. They work harder because they know what it is like to be at the back of the pack and they tend to strive to avoid it. As a result of their team experiences, they understand the value of teamwork and they often have a better understanding of the dynamics of forming a successful team and the steps required to insure the successful accomplishment of the team’s objectives. They also tend to place greater emphasis on the satisfaction that comes from a team achieving its ultimate goals. They seem to cope better with intolerable bosses. These are very valuable assets in the real world. Later in life bosses (coaches) tend to recognize and reward such performance.
It is a mistake to underestimate the value of the bench warmer.
2005-2006 Rules Changes and Points of Emphasis
Coach Patrick Sanders
Coach Sanders is from Henderson, Texas. He attended Stephen F. Austin State University where he received a degree in Kinesiology. He has coached at Clear Lake High School for eight years. He coaches football and basketball.
"I have always wanted to coach because the children are our future. We must teach them well and let them lead the way".
Sudden Cardiac Death in Athletes - Why Take The Chance? from the Wall Street Journal and DW
(Excerpt from the WALL STREET JOURNAL with comments added by D. Wilkerson( (This article was posted in June 2005)
From time to time we hear of a high school athlete who suddenly dies on the playing field or in the gym. Young athletes suffer sudden cardiac death at a rate thought to be two to three times as high as their less-active peers. Often the cause is hypertropic cardiomyopathy. HCM, as it is called for short, is a rare genetic abnormality that enlarges the left ventricle of the heart leading to sometimes fatal disturbances of the heart rhythm.
Few doctors in the United States suggest a young athlete undergo a heart scan which is required to detect the abnormality (HCM is a hidden heart defect that is not detected with a stethoscope). American medicine, despite being respected around the world for its all-out war on heart disease, does relatively little to detect problems or raise awareness of hidden congenital defects that suddenly kill young athletes. In American medicine, it is generally accepted that universal screening of young adults for heart abnormalities wouldn't be a good idea. Far too many healthy athletes would have to be screened to find a single defective heart, cardiologists say. U. S. cardiologists, instead of wide spread screening, favor efforts to raise awareness about the symptoms and risk factors, leading to testing of those at risk. They favor a focus on kids who have cardiac murmurs, fainting spells, chest pain, or shortness of breath, plus any who have had sudden cardiac death in their families. A simple inexpensive electrocardiogram (EKG) will flag most, but not all, cases of HCM. A new portable echocardiogram that cardiologists say is surprisingly effective is available today for under $60 and often as little as $35. A comprehensive echocardiogram that is excellent in detecting not only HCM but various other abnormalities costs around $900.
Little has been done to raise awareness of HCM among either front line physicians or the general public. One possible reason: Sudden death in adolescents falls outside the primary mission both of pediatric cardiologists, who treat children, and of adult cardiologists, who focus on the middle-aged and older. In cardiology, adolescence and young adulthood is a "no-man's land" says Robert Myerburg, director of cardiology at the University of Miami School of Medicine.
In Japan doctors routinely give school children electrocardiograms, or EKGs, which can detect congenital heart defects that a stethoscope cannot. Italy gives EKGs to all youths who want to participate in competitive sports. The International Olympic Committee recently recommended that young athletes have EKGs every two years.
When a young athlete dies suddenly, local news outlets typically seek comment from doctors, who typically fail to mention that the main cause is detectable by an EKG. After reviewing dozens of applicable news stories, it seems that doctors who were quoted almost never mentioned that fact, the ability to treat HCM, or the common warning signs!
It appears that many doctors underestimate the frequency of sudden cardiac deaths in young athletes. No government agency keeps count. But Dr. Barry Maron, a Minneapolis cardiologist who is one of the world’s leading authorities on HCM, has been compiling news reports for a registry. So far, he says his count suggests there are between 200 and 300 sudden deaths in young athletes per year in the U.S. Most doctors are likely to say there are 100 or fewer. Some physicians cite the National Federation of High School Associations as saying there are only 10 and 25 per year. The federation says it has never characterized its statistics as complete. An even lower figure comes from the American Academy of Pediatrics whose members do many pre-participation sports physicals. The academy says on its web site that only 10 to 13 such sudden deaths are reported each year. Their source, the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina says that 10 to 13 figure is too low and does not know where those numbers came from. The danger of understated numbers is that doctors think this isn’t something to worry about:”The wrong numbers have been very destructive”.
Without belaboring the point, regardless of whether your school’s pre-participation forms have several heart-related questions (most do not) or whether your cardiologist fails to appreciate shortness of breath or familial risk (many do not), there are steps you as a parent of an athlete can take to safeguard your child’s well being.
The steps required to address this problem include:
1. Get your child an EKG prior to participation (and a simple inexpensive echocardiogram).
2. Increase awareness by talking with your friends and parents of other athletes.
3. Encourage your school system to place defibrillators in the high schools and have qualified personnel trained on their use available.
4. Support the organization of clinics to provide free or low cost screening scans and encourage usage of the clinics. Turnout at these clinics nationally is dismally low probably due to lack of awareness.
With a few simple, inexpensive steps, responsible parents can possibly avoid the loss of one or more of their children. If mass screenings ever become the norm, the beneficiaries would not just be the occasional kid who’s found to have a cardiac defect and his or her siblings and parents (since HCM often runs in families), it would include scanning equipment makers and cardiologists to whom abnormal scans would be referred. Not to mention the spectators, teammates and coaches who would be spared from watching someone die needlessly.
Most of this article is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, June 23, 2005.