By Eric Stock

NORMAL – There is no I in team, but there is in a program that’s helping student-athletes at Normal Community High School grow.

“We often talk about leadership as coaches, but maybe we don’t intentionally teach it,” assistant girls basketball coach Dave Feeney said. “So we call the group I-Club and the I stands for three things, being intentional about the influence that we as Ironmen have.”

Feeney and boys basketball coach Dave Witzig formed the group five years ago as a way to help coaches do their job better and then help student-athletes look for ways they can become better leaders.

Witzig said it was as eye-opening when he got feedback from a former player.

“The coaches told them to be leaders he thought that meant to yell at his teammates, because that’s what he saw his coaches do,’ ” Witzig said. “That hit me pretty strong because I was his basketball coach when he played here. So I thought as a coaching staff, what do we want our student leaders to look like?”

I-Club meets once a week before school, while the coaches invite student-athletes to join them once a month. Meetings are voluntary and there’s no course credit for attending. The meeting in September drew 52 students.

Feeney said when students attend, they are given a task, whether it’s helping to clean up after a game or showing encouragement for others.

“As coaches we make practice plans and are really intentional about working on our sport, so one of things we wanted to do is if a kid goes though our program four years, what have we been intentional character-wise building into him or her?,” Feeney asked.

Witzig and Feeney say they also learn from other coaches who they might not otherwise interact with much. The coaches say they are also considering offering their model as a blueprint for other schools to adopt.

Eric Stock can be reached at [email protected].