Giving parents and fans an inside look

He sat on a stool in the corner and looked over the room."We played well enough to beat West," Cedar Rapids Prairie football coach Craig Jelinek said. "But we didn't play well enough to beat West and Prairie."It had that pick-up-your-team-after-a-tough-loss vibe to it, for sure, and Prairie's 29-22 homecoming defeat last Friday night to Iowa City West was about as tough as it gets. But Jelinek wasn't delivering this message to a bunch of football players.These were middle-aged men and women intently hanging on every one of his words."At least the kids really came out ready to play," a woman told Jelinek. "They played hard.""Yes, they did," the coach concurred.Since he took over the Prairie program in 1989, Jelinek has set aside Tuesday nights during the season for what you could call parent-coach conferences. Parents of Hawks players can come to his classroom at Prairie High School to ask questions, watch film of the previous game and get the coach's thoughts on and gameplan for the upcoming game.Cedar Rapids Washington does a similar thing with its weekly Washington Gridders meetings, which have been around since 2002. Parents and supporters can join head coach Tony Lombardi for lunch at the Starlite Room on 1st Ave. NE and get his thoughts on everything Warrior.There were 13 parents at this week's Prairie session that began at 7:30 p.m. and lasted past 9. There were 14 who attended Thursday afternoon's Gridders, with former longtime Warriors baseball coach Pinky Primrose earning a free Starlite Superburger for winning last week's college football pick 'ems contest."The behind-the-scenes stuff of what's going on with the program is what I like," said Barry Norden, a Washington supporter. "The Xs and Os, the injuries we might not know about. You get a little bit of everthing.""I like going back through each play to see what's right, what's wrong and how my son did," said Connie Van Winkle, whose boy, Jacob, is a starting fullback and linebacker for Prairie. "You can ask Coach any question, and he'll answer it."Jelinek is blunt with his answers. When one parent asked why a particular kid wasn't playing more, the coach said it was simply because there were others who were better, adding the young man in question wasn't the same player he was at a younger age.Of another player, Jelinek light-heartedly said "he can step in a pile of dung and come out smelling like a rose.""I started doing this for two reasons," Jelinek said of his parent-coach conferences. "One, to educate people as to what happened in a game. And, two, to extinguish criticism that comes from ignorance. There is so much ignorance that goes on in the stands.""I think it's good," Lombardi said. "This is a way to keep people in the loop. To let them know what we're doing, why we're doing it. It is open communication. It offers supporters access to our program, me and our philosophies."Jelinek and Lombardi certainly go heavy on strategy when they discuss games, diagramming plays on blackboards. Jelinek constantly rewinded video of offensive and defensive plays to explain why they did or didn't work.Their openess was fascinating."Coach has been really good about giving us information," said Prairie parent Bob Van Winkle. "He doesn't have to do this. It turns it into about a 14-hour-day for him, if you think about it.""I admit my falibility, and I think that disarms parents," Jelinek said. "I am very, brutally honest with them."So is Lombardi. He bemoaned the bad hands of some of his receivers, adding "they couldn't catch a cold if they were standing naked outside in the middle of winter.""From a fan perspective, it's hard watching warmups," a parent told him."It's hard watching them on the sideline, too," Lombardi added.Jelinek said his coaching peers think he's crazy for doing his parent-coach conferences, but he doesn't care. Neither does Lombardi."This is a way for parents to get to know me," Jelinek said. "To tell them 'Hey, I am going to make mistakes, but I'm going to work as hard as I can.'"Here's video of Jelinek dissecting game film: