ADM Football's Wheel of Misfortune. Photo courtesy of ADM Tiger Football's Twitter Page.
ADM Football’s Wheel of Misfortune. Photo courtesy of ADM Tiger Football’s Twitter Page.

One of the challenges high school athletic coaches take on is teaching accountability to a group of teenage student-athletes. Adel-Desoto-Minburn Tiger first-year head football coach Garrison Carter is using a tool from his previous coaching stint at Washington Community Schools to develop accountability in the Tigers’ program with a twist of fun. The Raccoon Valley Radio Network recently spoke with Carter about several offseason topics ahead of next month’s start to the season. One of the talking points is the team’s use of the Wheel of Misfortune. Carter developed the Wheel of Misfortune after his first season at Washington. “We have simple expectations like wear black shorts to practice or wear your practice jersey,” Carter said, “It wasn’t a problem (initially), but it was becoming a problem. We had one or two kids that would wear red shorts to practice or wear a different practice jersey or left theirs at home. We’d have one or two kids late for lifting.”

To establish accountability and disciple within the Demon football program, Carter created consequences in the form of Wheel of Fortune tiles filled with different exercises and whatever the wheel landed on was what the entire team did. “Basically, we were letting the kids decide their consequence for violating team rules,” Carter said, “It has all kinds of things like 100-yard bear crawls, some sprints, pushups, but the other thing it has is a free space.”

Carter adds the free space is among the more brilliant tiles created on the wheel. “It’s impossible to sort out what (excuse) is true, but the free space makes the wheel the bad guy.” Carter said, “We can be like ‘oh Johnny, I’m sorry that you’re car didn’t start for the seventh time this fall, I believe you, and I really hope you spin the free space and that the football gods are shining on you.”

The Raccoon Valley Radio Network will have much more coverage of ADM football in the coming days. The 2018 ADM Tiger Football season starts Friday, August 24 on the road against the Bondurant-Farrar Bluejays.