The Difference Between Price and Cost
Working at a school with students from over 80 different countries brings forth interesting questions about language that often have nothing to do with leadership, the subject they are in my class to learn. A tennis player from Belgium was confused on the difference between the words price and cost. I pulled out a calculator.
The Art of the Post Game Conversation
As your athlete gets older, the competition becomes better, and the stakes get higher. Losing means close to nothing to most 5th and 6th graders, but as you move into middle school and high school the losses sting a little more. Some teams/coaches/parents put much more pressure on their athletes to win.
Fear and Faith
Choose faith. Choose to prepare yourself and believe in your training. It has been said many times and I believe it to be true, “Champions do not rise to the level of competition, instead they drop to their level of training.”
The #1 Way to Influence Your Athletes
Give your athletes a reason to want to listen to you. Show them (instead of trying to only tell them) how a grown man or woman lives. Set the standard high, then live it. Only then will your words have the influence and conviction you hope they have on your audience.
Even if you don't think they are watching, they are always watching. Always.
Fishing for Influence
When I went fishing, I didn't think about what I wanted. Instead, I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with brownies or gummy bears, rather, dangling at the end of the line was a fresh worm.
More than a Title to be Influential
Old wisdom I have found to be true reads, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” I knew Mr. Denton cared about us. I don't know how, but I just knew. If you want to be an effective teacher, coach, manager, or parent, you need more than a title to be influential. Whatever role you have in a person’s life, you can only impact a person as far as they let you.
John Wooden on Chasing Your Destiny
John Wooden, legendary former UCLA basketball coach, did a TEDtalk before he passed away about how to find success. Here is a summary of what he said…
A Role for Every Player
This is one way to create team culture. It doesn't happen on accident, but when a coach is intentional about creating a positive environment, great things happen.
It starts with you.
Losing Twice in one Game
You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
3 Reasons to Encourage Playing Multiple Sports
So take it from someone who wants nothing but success for your child – let them play other sports. Let them develop to their full athletic potential and let them experience trying a sport in which they are not a superstar. The lesson they learn from having that experience will benefit them long after they hang up the cleats and tackle being an adult.
Where is the sun?
We should always have high expectations for our athletes, but we should also create an environment that allows for those expectations to be met.
Simple Basketball
If my team without a playbook is confident enough to shoot and I spend time teaching how to aggressively rebound I will beat your team with a playbook.
The Simple Playbook
During warm ups, instead of running a lap or doing sprints, we see how fast we can run from the huddle to the line of scrimmage, run a play for 15 yards, then sprint back to the huddle. They are timed and they want to get faster. We have 8 plays so we do it 8 times. We celebrate shaving seconds off our time. Lining up fast during a game is intimidating to the other team, and parents love it.
If.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
How to Create the Ultimate Teammate
The subject of "creating culture" has been buzzing as of late so I thought I would share a couple notes on ways I have found to create a fun and successful culture.
Getting the Parents Involved in Practice
Toward the end of every season, I schedule a "kids vs parents" game. A great time to do this is when the team is not doing so well and needs to have some fun, or at the end of the year party. There are many different ways to do this. Here are some tips to make it go smoothly:
Learning about your new team
Those simple, quiet moments you have with an athlete are the moments they will remember for the rest of their lives.
Playing in the Absence of Fear
As a youth coach I believe it is my job to model confident behavior for my athletes and coaches. It starts with intelligent preparation and ends not in winning (though that often is a by-product of great preparation) but in performing at the highest ability in which I am capable.
