Be True To Yourself | Coach Wooden

All credit of this article goes to Pat Williams and his book, Coach Wooden.  He breaks down Coach Wooden’s seven-point creed that was given to him by his father when he graduated from elementary school.  Many attribute a large part of his success to this creed and his ability to live it out daily.

The first creed is ‘Be True To Yourself.’  Below is quotes and passages from that first chapter.

Key Points
- Be the person you were born to be.
- Be true to your highest values and principles, and you will never be false to anyone.
- The secret to the magnetism of John Wooden’s personality is that he is always at peace with himself.

Once when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, known at the time as Lew Alcindor, sat at a restaurant with Coach Wooden heard someone a few tables away whisper loudly, “Look at that black freak!”

Coach Wooden saw that his star player was wounded to tears by the comment.  “Lewis,” he said, “people hate what they don’t know – and what they are afraid of.  But don’t ever stop being yourself.

Joshua Hugh Wooden’s first life principle is this: Be true to yourself.  In Coach’s’ own commentary on his father’s seven-point creed, he wrote, “I believe it is the first point in Dad’s creed for a reason.  You must know who you are and be true to who you are if you are going to be who you can and should become.

“You must have the courage to be yourself.”

What does it mean to be true to yourself?  This is not a command to be selfish or self-absorbed.  It’s a command to be faithful to your highest self, to your values, your honor, your integrity, the reputation you wish to maintain.  Be faithful to your commitment to be a person of character, courage, commitment, devotion, perseverance, and diligence.  Refuse to compromise yourself.  Never sacrifice your principles.  Refuse to betray your values.  If you remain true to the best that is within you, you will never be false or disloyal to any other person.

“To be true to yourself means having integrity,” Frank Arnold, a former assistant coach to Coach Wooden, once said.  “It means doing the right thing even when no one is looking.”

“Be true to yourself.”  Be alert to the impulses and temptations that would undermine your character and destroy your reputation.  If you are tempted alcohol or drugs or pornography or the temptation to cut ethical corners, don’t do it.   Don’t deceive yourself into thinking it won’t harm you.  Don’t compromise your integrity.  Don’t put your reputation at risk. 

Be true to your highest values and principles, and you will never be false to anyone.

One aspect of being true to yourself is to be yourself.  In other words, be the person you were born to be.

Lionel Messi and the Will to Compete

All credit for this article goes to the website, “Changing the Game Project.”  It is a great article about the importance of competing, using Lionel Messi as their muse.  In my opinion, competing is the most important character trait in athletes, young and old.  You can read the article in full here.

“Competing for Lionel Messi is not a sometime thing; it is an all-time thing. He has always been smaller than the other kids. He was born with a growth hormone disorder, and as a child was nicknamed “the flea.” Clubs would not sign him because he was too small. Even when FC Barcelona brought him to Spain at age 13, he was always undersized. He had to learn grit, and persistence, and guile. The more you kicked him, the angrier he got, and the better he played.

The will to compete does not simply show itself in games. As his former Barcelona teammate Thierry Henry said, it showed in practice too.  He isn't a sometimes competitor: he is an all-time competitor. 

We have a trend in youth sports today to measure lots of things, from speed and agility to free-throw percentage and body fat. But how can we measure and encourage competitiveness? Isn’t that as, or even more, important?

One of the first things I look at when evaluating a team or player is “do they compete?” An athlete who competes is more likely to spend the time and effort on their own to improve because the desire for excellence burns so deeply. I want these types of kids.”

This Is Easily The Best Job That I've Ever Had

This is how I want to feel about what I do everyday; working with that caliber of people everyday and being able to say that this is easily the best job that he has ever had.

ESPN recently laid off 100 employees, many of them high profile.  David Ching sent this picture in a tweet stating how great his time was at ESPN.  I think it would be great working in an environment such as the one described here. 

Some personal news pic.twitter.com/jLvoHel3Iv

— David Ching (@davidching77) April 26, 2017

References
Updated list of the biggest names laid off at ESPN. Sports.Yahoo.com.  Retrieved on April 27, 2017.

So You Got The Job ...

I was asked a great question today about leading a new program.  “You’re taking over a new program today!  What are your first steps?  What needs to be done now and what can wait.

This was my second year in a row taking over a new program and so this is what I have done the last couple of years.  In both situations, we were able to increases wins and players, parents, and administration seemed happy with the growth and direction of the program.

Buy-In From The Players
My first focus in both situations was on the players.  From the jump, it was about building relationships with them and getting them to trust me.  I’ve seen that if I do right by them and we grow like we are supposed to, parents are happy.  So I get the kids excited to play for me first and start preaching playing hard, playing smart, and playing together.

Needs Assessment First.  On court and off the court.
Off Court – Make sure that we have everything ready, or a plan to get everything ready, for our first practice and our first game next year.  Game and practice jerseys, shoes, travel gear, schedule, and travel.  I just have to have a plan for that so it doesn’t sneak up on me next school year.

On Court – How good are we and how good is our competition.  My goal both years has been to win 20 games and get in the playoffs, so I tried to see where we fit in today and what do we have to do to get there.

Style Of Play – What style of play is going to help us compete and win games
I obsesses over this.  I have to know how we are going to play, whether its ball-screen, motion, chin, etc. on offense, or pressure vs gap man, press, or zone on defense.  It might change once we really start workouts in the fall, but I obsess over that until I decide.  Our style of play, which has been our ball screen stuff the last couple of years, has been the most important thing that 

I’ve done that has led to our success in my opinion.

Get Better – Players have to get better
I then try to identify roles for the girls and start speaking it to them.  ‘You are going to be a big time rebounder for us.’  ‘You are going to be a really good catch and shoot girl for us.’
-  From there it’s the work.  Just putting in the work and getting better as overall players and your role on the team.

Plan For The Summer and Parent Communication

Meet with the players and email parents introducing yourself to the parents or have a parent meeting outlining your expectations for the summer, for the fall, and for your program.  I want to let them know who I am and my goals for the program and their athletes.  My goal early is to gain positive momentum and excitement with all involved leading into the summer. 

I take a simple approach.  Set a goal based off of where we are, where are competition is, and where we want to go, and work relentlessly to get there.  Along the way, I make sure that we all enjoy the experience by making sure that we have positive communication with all involved and that we focus on growth, character development, and the journey as much as anything else.

Kobe Bryant | Be Obssessed Or Be Average

All credit for this article goes to Kathleen Elkins and CNBC.com.  It was retrieved from yahoo.finance on 4/25/17.  It gives a little insight on how Kobe Bryant obsessiveness helped him become great.

In Kobe Bryant's rookie season for the Lakers in 1996, he played five minutes and scored two points in a disappointing game against the Houston Rockets.

"I needed to work harder," he writes on The Players' Tribune. He did. But three years later, he remembers, NBA legend Allen Iverson scored 41 points and made 10 assists while playing against him.

"Working harder wasn't enough," Bryant says. "I had to study this man maniacally." And he did: "I obsessively read every article and book I could find about AI. I obsessively watched every game he had played. ... I obsessively studied his every success, and his every struggle. I obsessively searched for any weakness I could find."

Bryant's fixation paid off. A year later, he had a second chance at guarding Iverson. He didn't score once, Bryant recalls of the rematch: "When I started guarding AI, he had 16 at the half. He finished the game with 16.

"Revenge was sweet. But I wasn't satisfied after the win. I was annoyed that he had made me feel that way in the first place."

From that point on, Bryant decided to "approach every match-up as a matter of life and death," he writes. "No one was going to have that kind of control over my focus ever again." He went on to win five NBA championships over his 20 seasons with the Lakers.

Bryant's approach is applicable beyond the NBA. As self-made entrepreneur Grant Cardone writes in his book "Be Obsessed or be Average," fixation is the key to achieving massive success: "Sure, you can be successful without being obsessed, but you can't reach the levels of success I am talking about without being obsessed.

"It's the single common factor that super successful people around the world share."

Steve Kerr Shows It's More Than One Way To Skin the Cat In Coaching

“For some coaches, they love getting into the bunker of the season. They crave a darkness of everything and everyone. Yet, Kerr doesn’t see the profession as a way to grind everyone down. He coaches to elevate everyone, and maybe that’s made easy with Curry and Durant and Thompson. Still, Kerr has always been true to his disposition: fiercely competitive, relentlessly self-deprecating and smart with everything he’s done in the game.

He’s truly a product of his coaching mentors: Gregg Popovich, Phil Jackson and even Lute Olson. Mostly, Steve Kerr is the son of Malcolm Kerr, the American professor murdered in Beirut in a terrorist act in 1984. Kerr loves the game, but he’s always valued it within context of the people it allows him to reach, the voice it gives him for something bigger than the game.”

These two paragraphs come from an article written about the struggles that Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr is going through this playoff run.  For years, ‘the grind’ was the norm.  Running suicides, no balls out during the off-season for conditioning, and late hours in the coaches office game planning was what it took so that you don’t get out worked by your opponent.

With coaches like Steve Kerr and Pete Carroll, it is becoming more of the norm to work smarter rather than harder.  As stated, Kerr is as competitive as anyone, he just goes about getting hte most out of his players differently.  Even UConn coach Geno Auriemma has stated that he doesn’t really yell at his girls as much anymore because they can’t handle it.  Nick Saban is an all-time great coach, but so is Dabo Swinney who is often seen laughing, and even dancing, with his team before and after big wins.  

Just goes to show that there are more ways to skin the cat in coaching.  You can read the article in full here.

References:

Steve Kerr'ssuffering is hard to watch, harder to live.  Sport.yahoo.com.  Retrieved on April 24, 2017.  

Devondrick Walker | NBA D-League 2016-17 Most Improved Player

"In high school I didn't really get to play varsity until I was a senior. Coming out of high school I had no scholarships. Luckily my assistant coach went to an NAIA school, Northwest Oklahoma State, and told me, 'Take a visit, you never know what can happen.' I went up there and ended up signing with them. I didn't play much as a freshman and ended up transferring to Texas A&M University-Commerce.

Coming out of college I thought I was done playing, honestly. I didn't have any offers, any opportunities really. I just went to open tryouts with the Austin Spurs, Texas Legends & Rio Grande Valley Vipers. Luckily Austin picked me up and I ended up making that squad. Jonathon Simmons was at the tryout before me. We were on that Austin team together; we're good friends.

If that guy can do it, so can I. We breathe the same, we put on our pants the same. Seeing the work he put in, I just follow that model." 

#ThisIsWhyWePlay
NBA D-League 2016-17 Most Improved Player
Devondrick Walker

Dominate The Line Of Scrimmage

You Can’t Just Sit Back And Wait For It To Come.  Organize Your Life So That You Can Go Out And Get What You Want.   Go Get What You Deserve.  Go Get What You WORK FOR.

 I was watching the Grizzlies battle the Spurs in game 4 of their first round battle.  At half time, they had a clip of Grizzlies head coach David Fizdale talking to his team about the importance of ‘Dominating the Line of Scrimmage.’ 

“Dominate the line of scrimmage.  Be the most physical, toughest team.  Initiate the contact and take the action to THEM.”

Play with a tough mindset and a sense of urgency.  Go get what you want from the beginning and do it the entire game.  You can’t sit back and wait for the game to come to you.  You will look up and realize that its 2 minutes left go in the 4^th quarter of a big game and it might be too late.  You can’t wait for life to just come to you.  You will look back and minutes, hours, days, and years have FLOWN by.  Dominate the line of scrimmage – Organize your life so that when you wake up every day you are ready to attack the day and win the day.

The time is always right to do what’s right.
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. -

Even if its 2 minutes left go in the 4^th quarter of a big game, dominate the line of scrimmage.  Every snap is a new play and every morning a new day.  Every day, no matter what happened the last play, focus first on dominating the line of scrimmage.

Who Was Joshua Hugh Wooden?

 

All credit for this goes to Pat Williams and his book, Coach Wooden.  In reading the first chapter of his book over the great coach, I was moved by the words spoken of Wooden’s father and the respect Coach had for him.  These words needed to be remembered as a way to positively influence your kids.

He was a role model for us all.

The more you study John Wooden, the more you realize that he is not only a great man – he’s a good man.  John Wooden is a man of character, wisdom, self-discipline, faith, integrity, honor, humility, and compassion for others.

I’ve become convinced that both the greatness and the goodness of John Wooden can be traced to his father, Joshua Hugh Wooden.  In fact, I believe the character and achievements of John Wooden can largely be traced to a piece of paper his father gave him on the day he graduated from the either grade.

When John Wooden graduated from elementary school, his dad gave him a $2 bill and a card. On one side of the card was this poem by Reverend Henry Van Dyke:

You Have To Want It … More | How Much Do You Want It?

You Have To Want It … More

- More than your parents

- More than your coaches

- More than your competition

Your coaches and parents can only do so much for you.  They can teach you, guide, you, help you, and push you.  But, you have to want it enough to put in the work.

And you can’t just say you are going to work.  You can’t just go through the motions.  Purposeful effort is the key.  Going so hard that you make mistakes is the key.  Bouncing back and learning is the key.  Growing is the key.  Mentally, physically, and emotionally.  Pushing yourself harder today than you did yesterday is the key.

Imagine where you could be if every day you were just a little better than you were yesterday?

In this age of Social Media and Information Technology, ‘WANTING IT’ is even more important.  There is so much more knowledge out there – everything is ‘Google-able.’

Greatness is more attainable now than ever for those that want it.

How Much Do You Want It?

The Importance Of The Coach/Parent Relationship

“But there’s nothing wrong with a healthy partnership between parents and coaches — nobody is right all the time. But with parents holding the bulk of the power, any high school coach who only gripes about parents and views them merely as an obstacle or outright enemy, or who unwittingly gets put in the middle of long-standing parent-on-parent battles (oh, it happens) without trying to figure out what’s going on, is going to be a coach who ends up fired or quitting. It’s hard to manage these relationships, and hard to take the first, positive steps to do so, but it’s going to be a lot harder for high school coaches who just figure their record is the only thing that does the talking.”

This was the final paragraph in a blog post at Forbes.com, written by Bob Cook on easily high school coaches, even successful ones, are being fired at the request, or demands, of the parents of the program.  He referenced a couple of coaches who had turned around programs and set records but were either non-renewed or quit do to pressure from parents.  You can read the full, original article here.

A big complaint in the coaching world is that parents would prefer to see their kids score 20 points in a losing effort on the basketball court than see them struggle and score 4 in a winning team effort.  With mentalities like that being reinforced at home and being heard in the stands, it can put unnecessary pressure on coaches to spend unnecessary time in thought on substitution schedules and playing everyone as much as possible, even if it goes against their beliefs and coaching philosophy.

While coaches can’t allow parents to run their program, it is important to build healthy and positive relationships with your parents so that you do have their support, and then you all can help these athletes move to common goals, which should include team success and individual growth.

As Bob stated earlier, with parents having such a voice and power in today’s sports culture, the coach who refuses to build positive relationships will eventually be out of a job.  But if you can be proactive and have a process or a system with how you handle parent/coach communication, it can really help your players, your teams, and your sanity.

References
Why Even Successful High School Coaches Are Deemed Expendable.  Forbes.com.  Retrieved on April 20, 2017.

Eight Tips For Building Positive Relationships With Parents

It is very important in today's sports culture to make sure that you keep positive relationships with your parents.   To get the most out of your kids, having the support of their parents can go a long way.  Parents are more involved and vocal in their children's athletics these days, so keeping them properly informed on their child and the team's development is beneficial.

The website, CoachAD.com has some really good articles and information on building and running a successful program, and they recently posted an article on how to build and maintain positive relationships with the parents in your program.  Below are the 8 tips that they gave.  You can read about them more in-depth here.

1. Have a parent-coach communication plan in place.

2. Communicate your plan to parents, players and coaches

3. Build a solid level of trust.

4. Give parents ownership in your program. 

5. Be clear and concise when you engage in parent-coach communication.

6. Make sure you create an environment in which parents feel that you are approachable.

7. Take a solution-based approach when confronted with any issue.

8. The perspective of parents might differ from the coach’s.

References:

Eight Tips For Building Positive Relationships With Parents.  Coach & AD.  Retrieved on April 18, 2017.

Brett Ledbetter: Person Over Player

Below are my notes from a speech by Brett Ledbetter at ‘What Drives Winning’ on the importance of placing emphasis on the PERSON more than the PLAYER.  You can see the video in its entirety below.

How You Are REMEMBERED As A PERSON Is So Much More 

Important, And LASTING, Than Your Stats

Key Takeaways:

1 - You can't remember who led the team in scoring 3 years ago, but you remember your favorite teacher from 10 years ago.

2 - How you are remembered as a PERSON is more important that how you are remembered as a PLAYER
3 - When helping with a problem, identifying the issue first and then finding common ground will help you find a solution.

In the speech below, Brett Ledbetter talked about how he helped a star collegiate soccer player overcome her biggest fears in sports, dealing with the expectations of other.  It helped me become a better coach, person, and father of a young athlete (or 3) by focusing on the person and the things you can control rather than results, which are often controlled, in large part, to outside forces.

You can control how hard you play, how much you prepare, and your effort level.  But sometimes, you just don’t make enough of the shots that you usually make, or sometimes the other teams just makes a few more tough plays on you.  Don’t let the outside forces that you can’t control bother you unnecessarily; just do what you can do and have faith that it will be good enough or that everything will work out fine.

What Do You Need My Help With?
First identify you biggest struggles and write them down.  Kelcy gave her biggest struggles below:

 

Brett then asked Kelsey the following questions:

Change Your LIfe By Focusing Energy On THE One Thing

Key Takeaways
1 – Organize your life so you can have focused energy

2 – Focus your energy on the One Thing
3 – Train your mind to have more focus

Find The One Thing

There is a great book called The One Thing that pushes the idea that real, sustainable success comes when you are able to focus on one thing.  And not just any one thing … the one thing, that when its done, makes all other tasks much easier, creating a domino effect towards success.  The idea is great and gives a more concrete plan to priotizing your life and following the Pareto Principle.

Make Life Simpler

Once you have completed the most important task on your to-do list, you focus on the next important task, knocking them out one by one.  The idea is that with each task completed, life gets easier because you are doing them in order.  It makes life simpler by focusing on just one thing to do.

Dr. Jim Loehr

I have been watching videos on the ‘What Drives Winning’ YouTube page, and PerformancePsychologist Dr. Jim Loehr’s videos have helped me relook at my coaching philosophy.  There is an article written about him here in which he puts an emphasis on how cultivating your energy levels can lead to higher levels of success.

Focused Energy On The One Thing

According to Loehr, the path to maximizing human capital isn’t better time management. It’s cultivating energy, then maintaining a laser like focus on how you spend it to get what you want out of life.

Read More On How To Focus Your Energy Below

Jim Loehr: The Power Of Story [Notes]

Key Takeaways
1 - We all have inner voices that represent our reality and shape our futures.
2 - It's important to influence our athlete's so that their inner voice matches their actions.
3 - Athletics should be about personal development first and foremost.

Below are my notes from a speech by Dr. Jim Loehr on the the power of our inner voice, our stories, and our just how great, and why, our influence is on the athletes that we lead.  You can see the video in its entirety below.

The stories from our inner voice shape the stories in our players inner voice which eventually shapes their destiny.

As a coach, you are in the influence business, and you have to influence the minds, hearts and bodies to be successful.

Great coaches are great story tellers, and through their stories, they mold, shape and modify the stories that the players tell themselves.   And the stories that the players tell themselves are the stories that they tell their parents, their friends, and the rest of the world.

Our stories represent our version of reality, and they ultimately become our destiny.

Your inner voice is the master story teller, and their inner voice is what you are trying to get a hold of with your athletes.  

You change them into desired directions buy getting them to buy-in and change the way their inner voice speaks to them.

Great changes and things happen when you can get their public and private voices begin to align.  Therein lies the power of a teacher/coach.

What Makes a Great Story
Stories that move mountains have:
1 – Truth (they long for people to tell them the truth)
2 – Direction (the story takes you somewhere)
3 – Purpose (getting the purpose RIGHT behind the ‘why’)

What’s Your
- What’s your primary focus?  Winning or personal development
- What’s your scorecard?  Extrinsic or Intrinsic Markers for measuring your sense of value
- Are you really in the character-building business?

How Do You Change Your Stories
Write your story by hand and rewrite it every few weeks or months by memory.  One day you will wake up and realize your brain has been intentionally rewired.

Dr. Jim’s ‘Story’
The truth  is that the obsession to achieve extrinsic success in sport by coaches, parents, and kids (the obsession to win at all costs) is undermining the basic fabric of sport, and threatens the well-being of legions of developing athletes.  Burnout.  Overuse injuries that may impact them for a lifetime.  The truth is that the real value of competitive sport is in helping athletes become stronger human beings for life.  More important than the chase to the top is who is the person becoming as a consequence of that chase.  And most of the youth in sport will never make professional athletes, but we are professionalizing the chase.  Sport provides an incredible platform to accelerate their personal development, respect for others, focus, engagement, determination, teamwork, persistence, fairness, gratitude, emotional control, resiliency, positivity, all of which will be strengths that will carry them for the entirety of their life.  And they’ll always look back on sport, and you, as a special gift.  A gift that will help them prepare for what they are going to face.

Dr. Jim Loehr: X's & O's of Building Character

Below are my notes from a speech by Dr. Jim Loehr on the X’s and O’s of Building Character.  You can see the video in its entirety below.

Our first responsibility is to use sports to build character.    There is a huge link between building character and performance outcome.

Character is a Muscle To Grow
Building character is just like building your muscles.  
- You place demands on the muscle by investing energy in it
- Consistent energy investment spawns growth
That is exactly how you build the muscles of character.

Organize Your Life
You have to organize your life and make the investments that allow those muscles of character to actually shine and you eliminate the blaming, excuses, and selfishness.

Character in action is why we are all here, and when it happens, highlight it.

Ways To Build Character
- Have a theme for the day/week
- Have each player identify a character muscle, such as accountability or patience or focus and focus on it during the day
- Leverage injury
- Share articles and quotes
- Encourage your players to bring examples
- Experience from former athletes
- Be a role model – Be the strength that you want your players to embody, and most importantly do it at times of adversity. 

They are always watching.  Your character as a coach is always on display.  

When you build your own character and your own character muscles, they will feel it and you will be in a better position to move forward and reach and teach others.

You don’t need a PhD in character to teach it; you just need a commitment.

How to Spot a Winning Team Culture

All credit of this article goes to Stephanie at LifeBeyondSport.com.

via here:

I attended a women’s basketball game recently in which the home team sought to win the regular season conference championship against the visiting perennial conference power.

I didn’t know anything about either team—their strengths or personnel.

The first few quarters were close, but the home team led. At the beginning of the third quarter, I predicted to my friends that the home team would fold and the visitors would walk away victors.

My prediction was based solely on what I observed of each team’s culture.

The visiting team had a winning culture.

Here’s what it looked like:

• players on the bench were animated and enthusiastic—standing, clapping, screaming for their teammates—they were very clearly FOR each other
• communication was off the charts; the players would huddle on the court between plays and had tremendous vocal leadership and eye contact
• when a player went down, teammates ran to help her up
• players ran on and off the court
• players owned their mistakes (“that was my fault”)
• players complimented one another (“great hustle play!”)
• they were TOGETHER and showed energy and grit

During an officials review near the end of the game, the visiting team players were huddled and never stopped talking.

The home team was standing near one another but somewhat separated. After the coach made some initial comments, none of the players talked.

No encouragement. No connection. The players were all in their own heads.

The difference in the two teams was striking!

All the visiting team behaviors were taught and reinforced. Those behaviors do not come naturally.

We all know that displaying the above characteristics does not guarantee a win.

But teams that do will overcome obstacles and even a talent deficiency. More often than not, they will put themselves in the position to win.

And on that night, the visitors made my prediction come true—they walked away victors.