Last March Simon Freier set a goal for himself; he wanted to shoot 10,000 three pointers before the next basketball season. Through a lot of time and hard work Simon has achieved this goal. A few years ago I went to a coaching clinic and heard Wagner native and long time girls basketball coach at Hanson Jim Bridge speak. Mr. Bridge was my high school principal and has been a successful coach for a long time. During his talk he mentioned that a lot of his girls would set the same goal, 10,000 shots in the offseason. Mr. Bridge said of all the girls he has coached only one of them ever achieved the 10,000 shots. After the clinic I decided to give our boys the same challenge, every year almost every boy that is returning to our program sets the same goal.

In my time at Wagner I have only seen 2 athletes complete the task, Derek Soukup did it two different off seasons. Derek put a lot of time in and worked hard and it showed. He went from an average player to a 3rd team All State player as a senior. Simon started this journey in the spring. He knew if he shot 250 shots 40 times, he would get to 10,000. After track practice I would come to the gym and set up our basketball shoot away and Simon would get to work. Before school was out for the summer he had already attempted 3,000 shots. Simon stayed dedicated throughout the summer. He attended almost all of our open gyms, and before school started he was up to 7,000 shots. Simon participated in football in the fall and as soon as that was over he got back into the gym to achieve his goal. He showed up before school at 7:15 every day and shot his 250 shots.

Hopefully next season we have even more of our athletes follow Simon’s lead and put this kind of time and effort into our basketball program. As a coach I understand that there are a lot of other things our kids can be doing; family time, screen time, and other sports. Simon managed to accomplish this goal and still participated in track, baseball, and football as well as have time for family and friends.