BOUNCING BULLDOGS - Coach's Corner

30 years of learning and collaboration

10/30/2019

As we anticipate the 30th anniversary of the North Carolina Rope Skipping Workshop hosted by the Bouncing Bulldogs, it has been wonderful to reflect on how far this workshop has come, how much it has accomplished, and how many people it has touched. For our very first workshop, we invited Richard Cendali’s Skip-Its from Boulder, Colorado and Lee Steinberger's Thump Jumpers from Richmond, Indiana to lead. During this time period, the Bouncing Bulldogs team was comprised solely of elementary schoolers, and we had no clue how to lead or host a workshop. During the planning process, I shared with Mr. Cendali that 3-400 jumpers would be attending, which he did not believe. He sent only 15 jumpers to serve as staff members, but on the morning of the workshop, 600 jumpers showed up to participate! Mr. C. responded so gracefully to the situation with his signature phrase, “No problem,” and we were able to have a successful workshop given the limited space and small team of staff members. This memory has stayed with me because regardless of the number of teachers you have, there is always a way to make it work.

In the early years of the workshop, it was all about fun and fitness. Our goal was to bring the local community together to have fun with one another and learn new skills. Eventually, after more experiences at international competitions, workshops, and other events, the Bulldogs have been fortunate enough to build relationships with jumpers and teams from all over the United States and world. This annual workshop is now a four-day-long festival which has allowed us to build bridges with teams in almost every corner of the world.

The aspects of the workshop I value most have nothing to do with the jump rope skills participants learn or who the most talented jumpers are. I most deeply value the connections made across teams, cultures, personalities, and ages. As jumpers embrace after the Sunday morning practice to say their goodbyes, genuine smiles lighting up their faces, I understand and appreciate those moments for how people come to know one another and care for one another through a common love for jump rope. The North Carolina Rope Skipping Workshop has consistently provided 30 years of service to the jump rope community around the world, and we are honored to host this event every year.

Bring your value

9/21/2018

We ended the 2017-2018 season with 150 team members, most of whom will be returning as we begin a new season. Each year, the Bouncing Bulldogs have a theme reinforced at every practice and class session.

Our previous theme was community outreach, and a big focus will continue to be on community outreach moving forward. The Bulldogs have been competing for a long time, but we also want to make more direct efforts to spread the sport of jump rope in communities with boys and girls who are interested in learning but may not have the resources.

Based on my experience as a PE teacher, it was instilled in me to teach boys and girls the value of skill development and movement education. My focus was on making sure that boys and girls were learning as many skills as they could learn throughout the early years of the program’s history. Now, my focus has shifted. My goal is to empower each jumper to gain the ability to take the skills they are learning and understand how to teach those skills to others. Weaving into skills with the rope, now our focus is to understand all the values you can learn from participating in a physical activity like jump rope.

A jump roper can teach skills all day, but it is also important to recognize and express the benefits of jump rope regarding physical literacy. I see a shift in our program where the thought process is becoming more about serving others with the knowledge we have, and we are open to the knowledge others will share with us. A person who picks up a jump rope and starts learning is going to enhance their physical fitness. But they are also going to enhance their character development over time when it comes to discipline, relationships and communication.

When choosing a theme, I have to ask myself as a coach, what is the personality trait of this year’s team? You have to be very aware of the values you are bringing into an environment, so how can we take all of the unique personalities within the program and bring them together with a theme?
With these considerations in mind, our theme for the 2018-2019 season is: bring your value.

Every jumper possesses a unique value and possesses a responsibility to work to better recognize their own value and share it with the world. Jumpers don’t just come to practice to be present. Jumpers come to practice to discover their value, and they can go home and share with their families why they go to practice every day as well as what they learned. They can answer the question: what did you learn that will enhance your values and make you a better person?

Reflecting on my roots

3/19/2018

I was born in August of 1957 in the Western part of North Carolina. My family’s farm was home to me. Home was 75 acres of cotton, peppers, sweet potatoes, ice potatoes and peanuts. Home was a vast landscape of hills, streams, and what I believed was the most beautiful river in the world. The streams were connected to the river. The water was cold and delicious throughout the year, even in the winter with snow resting on top. The water was pristine and pure. Home was the smell of animals, of parch peanuts on the stove, of a yard filled with grapes and plums. Home was our cement block house built by my uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. When I woke up every Sunday morning, home was the best environment in the world. I felt the love and support of my immediate family and extended family members everyday; each person had a genuine concern about the other people in our household. The scents in our home of fresh coffee and home cooked breakfast was amazing. We did not have a lot of money, but there was love for one another at the highest level.

As early as age four, I can still remember my granddad and uncles getting ready for a hard day of work on the farm. The rooster woke us up every morning. Every food we ate was cultivated by our family. They did not use any chemicals to grow food. My granddad would use cow and chicken manure to fertilize the soil to help crops grow. Today, food grown this way is called organic; from the day I was born until my senior year in high school, all the foods I ate were organic. I am truly blessed to have been provided this type of food to nourish my body in my early years.

To this day, many of my aunts and uncles still raise food this way. They take great pride in the preparation of the foods they eat. If there were ever any extra food left, we would give it to the animals to eat, and they would love it! I can recall some of the animals licking their tongues out as they lapped up food from the slop buckets. I can still hear the popping and smacking of the animals taking advantage of eating the leftover foods that some would consider waste.

30 years - a lasting legacy

11/13/2016

The past twenty-nine years have been an unbelievable journey! When we started as a jump rope demonstration team at Hope Valley Elementary School in Durham we only had sixteen jumpers and we held tryouts at the beginning of each school year. Now, we have 157 jumpers on our competition team and another 200 jumpers on our club team.

My wife Patricia and I are grateful for the thousands of jumpers and hundreds of families who have participated in the various programs we have conducted throughout the years. The growth of the Bouncing Bulldogs Program has continued because of the high level of community support, especially from dedicated parents and grandparents. The Bouncing Bulldogs has jumpers participating in our programs from thirty different schools in multiple counties of North Carolina. Additionally, these jumpers come from nineteen different countries throughout the world. In some cases, families have driven forty-five miles one-way to practice, or flown hundreds of miles to participate in one of our camps. This level of commitment is what makes our program so special to many people around the world.

The Bouncing Bulldogs Community Outreach Initiative is changing many lives locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. We are working with current jumpers in our program to think of more ways to engage children, youth, and adolescents in fun, physical activities, incorporating the use of ropes. In order to accomplish this, we want all our jumpers to become excellent teachers and ambassadors for the sport of jump rope. To teach is to learn twice, according to Chines poet and philosopher Lao Tzu. We in the Bouncing Bulldogs program agree with this philosophy.

The Bouncing Bulldogs Community Center will be the first jump rope gym in the world erected from the ground up, born from a vision to create a space where young minds could continue to grow and train their bodies using the art and science of jump rope. Our new Bouncing Bulldogs home will be a place where people from around the world can share in our vision to use the rope to connect people from different walks of life, helping them to grown physically, socially, emotionally, and intellectually. We are thankful to all the people worldwide who have helped us to fulfill this dream. Thank you for helping us to make the world a better place.

JUMP FORWARD!

A new year with new energy

8/22/2016

The Bouncing Bulldogs have so much to look forward to as we head into the 2016-2017 season, and as always, I'm very excited about the new year. I’m most excited about our new senior leadership because the 2016-2017 team will only be as good as our senior leaders.

Looking back over the past three decades, we’ve always had great leadership, and I think this year’s team could be the best ever. The personality traits the seniors possess are such that they don't make much noise verbally, but their actions have always spoken for them. As a coach, I have great respect for people who lead by their actions.

As we jump forward into a new season, the most exciting news for the Bulldogs has been breaking ground to initiate the construction of the Bouncing Bulldogs Community Center, which will allow us to expand and help more kids in our community. The building is slated to be completed by March of 2017 and will be the first ever jump rope gym built from scratch! We are grateful for the fact that over 480 individuals from all over the US have donated to helping us build our new gym. However, the program is still in need of funds. If a person would like to contribute, they may contact us.

From late August to December is a time when we develop our team chemistry. This team chemistry phase is the first of four phases throughout the year and is key because a successful year depends on a whether a program’s foundation is built with strong team chemistry. Throughout the fall and winter months, from our annual workshop in November until the beginning of February, our program engages in numerous performances all over the US. This phase of the season is a time to focus on community outreach as the Bouncing Bulldogs share our passion for jump rope with others and inspire people using the jump rope as a vehicle. We start focusing on putting groups together for competition from February to early May, and we train at the highest level during the season’s fourth and final phase.

To all of our friends and supporters around the world who think I may be slowing down after three decades of leading the Bouncing Bulldogs program: I am more energized than ever heading into the new year, so watch out! I would also like to thank my wife, Mrs. Fredrick, for supporting me in this role as a coach. Without her, none of this would be possible!

She's the kind of person every jumper should want to be

2/13/2016

When I think of Kenzie Ruston, the first five characteristics that come to mind are discipline, hard work, risk-taking, grace, and style. Kenzie was loved at the highest level by her parents, grandparents and brothers. As a coach, that’s one of the key qualities I look for in a jumper: faith, and how much they love and respect family. She was a joy to coach and an inspiration to all.

As the Bouncing Bulldogs program has adapted to the loss of Kenzie, I give the senior leadership a lot of credit for how they were able to be leaders during this challenging time. All of the jumpers in the program were amazing for how they have continued to move forward in life because that’s what Kenzie would have wanted. As we move forward, we will hold on to the many outstanding qualities she instilled in all of us as Kenzie expected nothing less than the best from each person she touched. When she saw that more work needed to be done, Kenzie set high standards and led by example, calling practices at 5 am. She taught everyone around her that “The sky is NOT the limit!”

In my three decades of coaching, it is rare for someone to represent everything the sport of jump rope stands for in such a humble way. As Kenzie’s coach for 13 years, my wife and I hope Kenzie’s legacy as one of the most recognized student athletes in the sport of jump rope will be honored by international jump rope organizations.

Kenzie’s legacy can be honored each and every day in endless ways. First, we can look at what she stood for. We can use these characteristics as inspiration to become the best we can be as there will never be another Kenzie. Both Kenzie’s parents and the Bouncing Bulldogs program have plans in progress for something amazing in Kenzie’s honor as well. Be on the look-out for this exciting announcement.

Kenzie was a truly special person who brought so much positive energy into the world. In addition to faith and family, she valued discipline, hard work, leadership, perseverance, community service, humility, teamwork, and respect, and she exemplified these qualities in everything she set her mind to. Kenzie’s impact has reached the corners of the world, and she will always live on in spirit.

It's more than just jump rope

10/13/2015

COACH K. LEE

I am very appreciative of the Bouncing Bulldogs organization for helping to mold me into
the woman I am today. I have been a member of the Bulldogs either as a jumper or a coach for 25 years. The lessons learned throughout my years transcend beyond the sport. I am currently working as a physical therapist in an orthopedics outpatient clinic in Greensboro, North Carolina. Somehow, my experiences with the Bulldogs always appear in conversation with my patients. Recently, I have treated many Veterans who were stationed overseas, and we often share and compare places we’ve traveled. Patients comment on my ability to listen, empathize, and then organize a plan of action. I learned these important skills from peer-teaching within our team and teaching others at various workshops across the nation and around the world. It is important in life to be able to relate to others on a personal level no matter their social, physical, racial, or economic background.

School never came easy to me. I was never the smartest in my class, never received straight A’s on every report card, and had to apply two years in a row to get into the Duke University Physical Therapy Department. But Coach Fredrick always told me, “Hard work will beat talent any day.” To this day, I will not let anyone outwork me in whatever I do. In school and in life, I am not afraid to ask questions or to say I don’t know the answer. If I do not know the answer, I will not give up until I find the answer. I learned perseverance, discipline, organization, humility, and motivation through jump rope. My journey has not been easy and has come with both successes and failures. Therefore, I read the following quote weekly by Denis Waitley, “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”

Jump Rope Around the World

9/1/2015

From traveling worldwide to communicating with coaches from a diverse set of backgrounds, there is a certain excitement that resonates when relationships are formed through the sport of jump rope.

One of our goals as a program is to spread this excitement all across the world, touching as many lives as possible. Connecting with countries where jump rope is not practiced at a high level is essential to the growth of the sport. There are, however, multiple factors that play into developing lasting teams and programs. Bringing jump rope to a new community is important, but keeping it there is vital!

The key to program success is teaching. When we send teachers out into communities on a local, national, and international level, they are given high expectations: to maintain positive body projection, respect the local culture, and cater to the needs of every jumper they interact with. Giving back to the community is a great service to others and helps expand the development of jump rope. By focusing on serving the local community before expanding to a wider audience, a program develops a foundation of experience that allows it to share a story. Start small before reaching out to a larger community.

For those interested in starting a jump rope program, develop a mission statement before anything else. A mission statement lays the foundation for program outcomes, curriculum, and learning experiences. At the same time, the mission statement sets standards for jumpers to follow. If student-athletes buy into the mission statement and maintain consistency with their work ethic and skill development, a program will achieve its goals.

Through jump rope activities, young people gain opportunities to develop physically, emotionally, and socially. Reducing stress, enhancing focus and determination, and developing confidence, mental toughness, and perseverance are just some of the countless benefits of jumping rope.

With discipline and a passion for the sport, a small jump rope club can progress to become a successful program focused on teaching children skills utilized in all aspects of life. The sky is not the limit!

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS THAT LAST A LIFETIME

9/23/2014

For 25 years, the Chapel Hill-Durham based Bouncing Bulldogs have hosted the North Carolina Rope Skipping Workshop. Throughout those years, many individuals, groups, organizations and corporations have contributed to the success of the workshop and its impact on young people locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. The Bouncing Bulldogs organization is grateful to all who have been a part of the workshop and its success.

Though the workshop is designed to promote the physical activity and sport of jump rope through the teaching of skills, it has turned into so much more. Perhaps the most significant outgrowth of the NC Rope Skipping Workshop has been the many relationships that have been formed among participants, spectators and supporters of jump rope. In jump rope, the community of jumpers is known for the exchange of pins, a symbol of unity and camaraderie. The annual NC Rope Skipping Workshop, held on the first Saturday of November each year, has produced a symbol of unity among its own community, the quality of the networks and relationships that have been established at this prestigious, annual event.

I look forward to being a part of the 25th Anniversary Workshop taking place on Saturday November 1, 2014 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and hope that many new, positive relationships will be formed at an event that has a simple goal yet a profound impact.

quotes from the coach

9/23/2014

As the Bouncing Bulldogs embark on the 2014-2015 season, a season in which the program will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the North Carolina Rope Skipping Workshop, I am excited to share a few words that I frequently use to inspire the many dedicated and committed jumpers whom I have the privilege of coaching.

"Total dedication with no compromise."
"Jumping rope creates hope."
"Imagine the possibilities."
"Hard work will never hurt you."

COACH FREDRICK

Ray N. Fredrick, Jr. is
the founder, director
and head coach of the Bouncing Bulldogs Jump Rope Program. He uses jump rope training and physical fitness activities to provide an arena for developing leadership, communication and interpersonal skills.

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