The Double Defeat
When the scoreboard says defeat, and you have given yourself completely to the experience, you can hang your head high knowing you gave your all.
But if you held back, and you lost, you lost TWICE: A double defeat.
That will for sure keep you up late at night sobbing about your "what if" story.
Attention to Detail
Coach, challenge your athletes to set the standard for the team. They will not adhere to seemingly arbitrary rules handed down on a piece of paper or written on a wall. You didn't when you were an athlete and neither will they. However, if you can get them to feel how the expectation will help them, you will see improved compliance.
What to say on the first day of practice
You know first impressions matter. You want them to respect you. You want them to trust you. You want them to want to come to practice and give everything they have.
Doubt creeps in, bringing along questions you know are ridiculous, but you entertain them anyway.
Take Control of Your Destiny
This is a speech I gave to a championship football team three months before they were champions. It was a room full of young men, but the speech could easily be for either gender.
Your future is being created right now, in this instant. Take ownership of what you can control and be the reason for your success, leaning not on the talent of others, but by the character of your best self.”
The Greatest Teacher, Failure is.
Rarely will a great idea interrupt us. Silence your doubts and your ego, then what to do next to reach your goal will be obvious.
Opportunity is NOWHERE
My friend Ed came to town visit and talk teaching leadership to athletic teams. After a few hours of great conversation, he sat back and said, "Alright, we have talked about a lot of stuff. But if you If you could only say one thing to a group of athletes, what would you say?"
To Scold or to Mold…
Former South African Rugby National Coach Peter DeVilliers leans in, piercing me with his eyes while the echo of his words bounces around in my head.
A coach is merely the extension of a child’s dream.
The Number One Gift You Can Give...
Your kids don't need more presents, they need more presence.
Be Bigger on the Inside than on the Outside
Its not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
The Whisper of Inspiration
“LEATH! LEATH!” I hear my replacement yelling my name. I jog to the sidelines and report to my position coach. He is furious. At 5’9, my defensive back coach played college football at the same position I was just relieved of. I prepare myself for a wicked tongue lashing, but I get nothing.
Kids are not mini-adults
Every season, no matter the level of the sport, a different team shows up. Though the athlete could be coming from the same school as the year before, every season has its own culture and feeling. 6th graders are now 7th graders, juniors are now seniors, so on and so forth. A lot changes in a young athlete’s life between seasons, and as coaches we should not assume fundamentals are as sharp as they were the year before, or that the athletes are coming with prior knowledge.
Empowering Children to Find Courage
This story highlights the importance of coaches in developing athletes' physical skills, confidence, and self-esteem. Coaches can make a lasting impact on their athletes' lives beyond the game, and it is essential to encourage and show athletes that they are loved and valued both on and off the court.
A Coach's Voice
As parents and coaches, we are in the business of creating adults, so the more we can work together, the better off our future adults will be.
Yelling vs Coaching
Teach your young athletes to know the difference between yelling to hurt and yelling to help and keep your own emotions in check. Use yelling as a tool and use it sparingly so when you need to get their attention on something important, it doesn’t sound like everything else you yelled to them.
Confidence beats Complexity
The focus of the coach should be on creating confident, fundamentally sound athletes during the week. Then, on gameday, let them play. Give the athletes the tools they need and let them build a victory. When the game starts, it is less about coaching anyway and more about managing. If your young athletes can master the basics and they truly understand their job on each play, then you are way ahead of most youth football coaches I come across who focus more on tricking the other coach than on developing sound football players.
Increase Emotional Intelligence with Intentional Interruptions
Start on time, every day. End on time, every day. Teach the athletes what to do if they are late. Don’t make them run when they are late, that just makes them more late. Assign a team captain to facilitate consequences after practice for those who are late. If no one is late, the captain doesn't have to stay. It only takes once for a captain to have to stay after because of his or her teammates. Peer pressure is WAY more powerful than whatever you have to say about the subject.
The Zipper Phenomena: Building Character in 30 Seconds.
There are not many things more satisfying to me than a smiling baby, an excited child, or a youth victory dance. This whole situation took place in a matter of thirty seconds. It could have been easily prevented by mom reaching down and zipping up his jacket for him, but she paused and let him do it. Had she intervened, the little boy would not have had the joy of triumph after the struggle. But mom, in her great wisdom, allowed her son to do it on his own. Though I am sure it was difficult to see her son struggle, the payoff of victory outweighed the difficulty of failure.
The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World's Greatest Teams
The founding editor of The Wall Street Journal’s sports section profiles the greatest teams in history and identifies the counterintuitive leadership qualities of the unconventional men and women who drove them to succeed.
Coach the Species, not the Sport
As coaches, we get so caught up in current wins and losses and the season's drama that we forget we are only one season of our student athletes' lives. We get them for a short and critical time in their life, a time where the words we say will echo in their minds the rest of their lives.