IU seniors balance coaching high school sports with student life

Ken Florek and Jeremy Kline’s Friday nights are not those of a typical student.
While other IU students hit the town, these two seniors head to the sidelines.

That’s because Florek and Kline coach football at Bloomington High School North, and are two of the many IU students who volunteer or are on salary as coaches at Monroe County middle and high schools.

“It’s almost like an internship for a business major,” said Florek, who plans on becoming a teacher. “I’m learning how to work with the kids and how to be part of a school.”

Similarly, Kline said he hopes to coach at the collegiate level in the future, and the hands-on experience at Bloomington North is part of the appeal.

But career goals and practical training aren’t the only reasons IU students are involved in area youth athletic programs.

For these two students, coaching is also a good way to stay involved in the community and in football, but as Kline said, “coaching is different from playing the game.”

Senior Lucas Smith echoed this sentiment. Smith is the head girls’ cross-country coach at Tri-North Middle School in Bloomington.

“Kids think about others more than you think they do,” Smith said. “You don’t notice these things until you start coaching.”

Smith said he first got involved as an assistant coach at Bloomington High School South his freshman year, then he moved to Tri-North as an assistant after taking a year off.

When the former cross-country coach graduated last year, Smith was next in line.
He said his passions for running and for the kids are what drive him.

“I really enjoy working with the kids in a non-school capacity,” Smith said. “I have a passion for the sport, and I want to get as many kids involved as possible.”

Behind the scenes, there are other stories brewing.

Monroe County Community School Corporation,, like much of the country’s education systems, is struggling financially, and budget cuts have become a very real threat.

This school year’s budget for the MCCSC included roughly $750,000 worth of cuts, which nearly eliminated salary funding for the county’s a™thletic and extracurricular activities.

In the end, a coalition of parents and other community members was able to raise nearly all of the money that was cut and was able to restore  more than 400 jobs required to run the county schools’ extracurricular programs, according to the group’s website.

Even though that scare is done, the threat of a similar event is still present. Should something like this happen again, Tri-North’s Athletics Director and Assistant Principal Keith Bush said he is optimistic about the important role college students could play in salvaging athletic and extracurricular programs.

“College students are quicker to volunteer or coach for a little less as far as salaries are concerned,” Bush said. “We’ve got people willing to give their time.”

Bush acknowledged the recent omnipresence of budget cuts and how difficult it is to make those tough decisions and to deal with the repercussions.

But he stressed the positive outcomes of having college students on staff coaching for area schools.

“It’s beneficial to have students interested in it, and they can connect with our kids, as well,” Bush said.

Coaching offers opportunities for students, too, Bush said.

He said it’s a good level to enter into the profession and find out if one might be good at coaching.

But for those on the front lines of coaching — the students themselves — it’s about the experience.

“Stories happen every day,” Smith said. “You remember that show from when we were growing up, ‘Kids Say the Darndest Things’? It happens all the time.”

But perhaps Florek best summed up his experiences with the Bloomington North football team.

“It’s the thing I’m most proud of in my college career so far,” he said.