Striving to be successful

on and off the field

Assistant head coach John Baxter has added a personal touch to the football team's acedmic game plan and has had success because of it

By Jenna Nielsen
The Collegian

John Baxter knows the struggle between athletics and academics.

When the Fresno State football associate head coach arrived at Fresno State in 1997, he and head coach Pat Hill inherited an academic program with a reputation in need of repair.

The team wasn’t excelling on the field or in the classroom and Hill promised to restore Fresno State to an elite level on both fronts.
Hill’s first hire was Baxter, who brought a personalized program called the “Academic Gameplan” that he created and patented. The program helps students with organization, time-management, note-taking and other fundamentals and techniques needed to succeed in the classroom.
“I flunked out of high school and college,” Baxter said. “That’s how [Academic Gameplan] happened.”
In his sophomore year in high school, Baxter said he had to talk his way back into school. He spent the next two years struggling to maintain average grades.

Because of his high school performance, Baxter was rejected by nearly every college he applied to.

Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa denied him at first, but allowed him to enroll on a conditional one-semester review after he completed a special appeals process.

Baxter got a 1.9 GPA his first semester and was kicked out. He would have one more chance at a review with the director of admissions, the academic dean, and the dean of students.

“I started interviewing and talking to every single person on the team that was a good student to prepare for my hearing,” Baxter said.

It worked. The board told Baxter he’d better have a plan for his academic recovery. Baxter graduated from Loras in 1985 and went on to receive his master’s in higher education from Iowa State in 1987. At that point, the Academic Gameplan was in its infancy, but it is now used by more than 120 high schools and colleges.

“Students don’t execute in the classroom because they don’t know when, why and how,” Baxter said.

“When I started coaching, I saw all these guys making the same mistakes I was making.”

Baxter said preparing the student- athlete for life is like installing software into a computer.

“The athlete by himself is nothing,” Baxter said. “It’s the technology you install.”

Baxter said in football, players go to a training camp and go through what is called an “install” or “installation.” Like a computer, each student-athlete has the hardware but the software must be installed for the computer to operate.

The coaches install the offense and the defense and with the Academic Gameplan, they also install the academic offense, Baxter said.

“The Academic Gameplan becomes the approach to allow them to apply their intelligence,” Baxter said. “If your motivation level is low, trial and error will eat you up and spit you out.”

Baxter said he is critical but at least he is offering a solution.

“I’m in the trenches fighting,” Baxter said. “Is my plan the greatest in the world? I can’t say, but at least it is a plan.”

Baxter said students receive no training on basic fundamentals and skills they need to succeed academically.

“This is the first time in all these kids’ lives that they’ve ever been given a concrete plan on how to do things,” Baxter said. “I’m just giving them the manual.”

Baxter said students who aren’t very motivated or who aren’t high achievers see success once on the program.

“For the first time they are beginning to function. They’re achieving,” he said. “My job is to encourage and empower these kids, show them a better way and hold them to higher standards.”

Over the last eight years, Fresno State’s graduation rate has doubled and the program has produced 65 Academic All-WAC football players. In the recent Academic Progress Rate (APR) report released by the NCAA, Fresno State’s APR of 939 was 18 points higher than the national average of 921.

It also ranked best among the 2005 WAC institutions and was the fourth-best of NCAA Division 1-A football programs in the western United States.

There are three Division I conferences in the west: the Pac-10, the Mountain West and the WAC. There are 28 teams in those leagues and Fresno State’s APR score was higher than many Pac-10 schools, including Cal, USC and UCLA.

Stanford was the only Pac-10 institution that had a higher APR than Fresno State.

The Airforce Academy and University of Utah were the other two schools that finished ahead of Fresno State.

“We’re right next to them,” Baxter said. “My father-in-law was the head coach for [Utah] the last 12 years and they are an Academic Gameplan school.”

Defensive lineman Garrett McIntyre has been on the Academic Gameplan since he arrived at Fresno State and said he is happy with the program.

“It keeps you organized and organization is very important when it comes to school work,” McIntyre said. “You keep up on your grades and tests so you know exactly what your grade is.”

In 2004, McIntyre was one of four players to be selected to the All-WAC first-team and academic All-WAC team.

Place kicker Clint Stitser has also seen success on the program. He currently maintains a 4.0 GPA.
“It’s a lot easier when you use a plan,” said Stitser, a business major. “It’s made my organizational skills a lot better.”

To Baxter, executing in the classroom is just as important as executing on the field.

“There are three things I want my players to be,” Baxter said. “I want them to be thinkers, I want them to be communicators and I want them to be competitors and learn to become men for others.”
He said this applies to athletics and academics.

“For just a short period of their life these students are athletes,” Baxter said. “But for the rest of their life, they will be students.”

Baxter said he is still constantly improving his Academic Gameplan.

“If you asked me what has been my best game, well I haven’t had it yet. I always think my next game will be the best,” Baxter said. “I still think there is more I can do. I don’t see my work being done.”

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