One More Season

Here in Texas, girls' basketball practices just started, boys' basketball practice starts this week, and football and volleyball are gearing up for the playoffs.

Whether you are a freshman just getting your career started or a senior starting your last season, ENJOY every second of it because when it's over, it's over. 

Enjoy the excitement of the first practice, the first scrimmage and the first game.  The tournaments are the best way to get to know your teammates and coaches because you spend so much time with them.

Recharge right before district starts and half-way through district.  Cherish those Saturday morning practices and those holiday practices.  Time in the gym alone with your team without having to worry about school is a BLESSING.

Make a scrapbook, make a blog, video as much as you can.  Just enjoy it all.  Get to know your coaches on a different level than just sports.  Get to know their family.  Build a strong relationship with at least one teacher.

Some of the best advice I received was from my college coach.  At the start of every season, he told us that every year, good things are going to happen and bad things are going to happen.  When good things happen, ride the wave, enjoy the success, stay consistent, and don't get overly confident.  When bad things happen, don't get too down.  Stay positive, bring energy and enthusiasm, and say only positive things to yourself and your teammates.  Have faith that something good will happen sooner than later.

Before every game, my college coach repeated the same thing.  Seasons, games, and life are all the same.  They are filled with good and bad.  It's all about how you handle the pressures, grow from the pressures and impact others.  You are going to go through adversity.  It's how you get through it that matters.  Were you positive and a good person, or did you let the adversity get to you in a negative way?

This season and your career os going to go by quicker than you know.  Just enjoy it all, be present in every moment, and take it all in.  And thank as many people along the way as you can.

Its Not What You Say | Its What You Do

I think themes, slogans, and mission statements for teams are GREAT.  

Villanova: Attitude

Minnesota Football: Row the Boat

LSU Football: One Team, One Heartbeat

They are inspiring and provide a fresh start to the season. They bring us together, and it can be a quick way to establish expectations and norms.  Without a vision, the people will perish, and teams can benefit from as many things as possible that can bring them all together.

But at the end of the day, you have to play.  You have to work.  You have to work together.  You have to act.  It's not enough to just have a slogan.  It's not enough just to have a goal.  You have to live out the purpose behind the slogan.  You have to use that slogan to make you better and to keep you focused on the same goal throughout the grind of a season and the year.

So often, we will see a team or even individual players create a theme or set goals and all that it does it take space on a locker room wall or on a notecard in an athlete's locker.  That theme or goal or mission statement needs to be a living tool that motivates and inspires all season long.  They need to inspire you to establish habits that will help you reach those goals.

Find ways to allow those words to make you better, and find ways to make those words last.

Every practice or at least once a week, as a player what that theme means to them or how they can use it in school that week.  When your athletes aren't performing or working in a way that matches their goals, bring the goals up in conversation.  Mission statements, goals, themes, etc are great, just don't let them die out throughout the season.

Sometime You Hunt | Sometimes You Are Being Hunted

ATHLETE: Am I good?

PARENT: Why do you ask that?

ATHLETE: Because I'm not starting.  Does that mean that I'm not good?

PARENT:  Not starting doesn't mean that you aren't good.  You play alot, you make plays when you get in the game, you add value to your team and your team appreciates you and accepts you, and your teammates love playing with you and your coach lives coaching you.  

In sports and in life, you have to learn how to be the hunter and be the hunted.

The hunted is the starter.  The All-Star.  The MVP.  The champion.  The one who gets all of the attention and all of the love.  It's great being the hunted as long as you never forget that people are hunting you and want your spot.

The hunter is the one coming off the bench, wanting to start.  They are watching, waiting, and working.  It's great being the hunter because the expectations aren't there yet and you are still the underdog, and you are still hungry and grinding behind the scenes. 

Whether you are the hunter or the hunted, you have to kill everyday at practice.  You have to work hard outside of practice to get better.  The hunter has to grind to take a spot, and the hunted has to grind to keep their spot.

It's good to be both the hunter and the hunted.  It's good to know how to be the star and handle all of the expectations that come with it and know how to hunt and work and go get what you want.

Nothing in life is free, and you have to earn (hunt for) everything that you want.  When you get it (hunter), you have to know how to appreciate it and keep it.

Learn how to hunt and be the hunter.  Right now you are the hunter.  Now, go find a way to EAT.

PLAYERS: It takes DISCIPLINE | COACHES: Accept and Understand

For Players

When you are bored, what do you do?  Do you do something that gets you closer to your goals, or do you play with something that is a distraction?  Do you find ways to work on your game or do you have other outlets like your phone or your TV?

The best players know how to fill their downtown appropriately.  A lot of times this means rest, relaxation, and getting away from the game.  A lot of other times, this means practicing on your own, watching film, doing skill work, stretching, conditioning, or watching YouTube videos that can help you get better.

Someone is always working, even when you aren't.  A big difference between good players and great players is how much time and effort they put into getting better.

For Coaches

I used to worry about parent phone calls, parent meetings, and parent emails.  Then I realized that parents just want to do things:  

1) What's best for their kid and 

2) To be heard.

Of course, what's best for the kid isn't always what's best for the team, and some conversations are much more difficult than others, but once I started operating from the standpoint of listening and understanding those two things, my peace of mind and anxieties changed for the better.

Listening with the intent of understanding can change the interactions that we have every day.

When that parent comes in to complain, most of the time they just want what's best for their kid and to be heard.

Just listen...
Show you care...
Try to understand...
Gain trust.

For Parents:

Tell your kids, "I love watching you play!!"

Be The Thermostat

Be the thermostat that changes the energy and changes the culture, not the thermometer that adapts to or accepts, or reflects the energy and culture.

I always tell my athletes or young teachers and coaches to 'remember who you are' when they go into a new situation.  When you are young, you are full of energy, life, and new ideas.  But some locker rooms and teacher's lounges have their ways of zapping all of that positivity out of you if you let it.

I also tell them to guard their hearts and remember why they are here.  The more you are in sports and in education, the more you realize that everybody doesn't have the same intentions or 'why' that you do.

That's why it is important to bring the energy that you value everywhere you go.  And it has to be thought about and intentional.

Bring energy when you are going to a practice in December where everybody is dragging in.

When you are going to that challenging conference road game - being energy.

When you have to stay late for that staff meeting in October - bring energy.

Make it a goal to bring energy every day.

High Expectations

Every weekend, the best place to people watch is a youth sports event.  You hear coaches yelling at players, parents yelling at players, parents yelling at coaches, coaches yelling at parents, parents yelling at parents, and everybody yelling at referees.

When done right, youth sports is a beautiful thing where kids come out and play, make friends, learn how to work with others, learn how to be active, and progressively get better over time with the right support and encouragement, with the right amount of practice, and the right amount of passion and commitment level.

When it's done wrong, it's a circus.

One thing that I think is dangerous is having unreal expectations for our athletes.  We can have unreal expectations for our athletes when we think that they are better than what they are.  We can also have unreal expectations for our athletes when we know that they can perform to a certain level, but we haven't given them certain skills yet or they are put in certain situations that they haven't been in before and we just expect them to excel in this new and different environment.

For example, there was a 6th-grade playing basketball for a pretty good team against good competition.  The coach put him at point guard for the first time; he usually plays a different position.  When the other team starting pressuring him, it was obvious that he hadn't seen this type of defense in this situation, so he panicked and turned it over a few times in a row, leading to his team's defeat.

The kid was obviously shaken, and his parents didn't make it any worse.  With every turnover, they would tell something at him, he would look nervously in the stands, and you could see his self-worth continue to drop.

What he needed were motivation and encouragement.  What he really need was reps and practice in this type of situation and someone giving him the tools he needed to be successful in this situation.  What he got was ridicule and un-constructive criticism in front of everybody.  The kid knew he was messing up; he didn't need to know that everybody knew he was messing up.

I always ask parents how could they be mad at their kids if they, or their coach, haven't taught their kids something that they feel like their kids should be doing.  It's one thing to be upset with a lack of effort - my kids know that I expect them to their all as a core value of who they are - it's another thing to be upset when they just don't know how.  We can't expect kids to go out and automatically know.  It takes practice and reps and more practice and more reps to be able to perform something in the game.

Start With Fun

Next time your kid is messing up, just think about that.  Identify the difference between lack of effort, lack of execution and lack of know-how.  And think about what you can do at home to help them improve and succeed.

Start With Fun

Kids want to play.  We want to teach.  The next time you are working with your kids or wanting to teach them something, start with a game, then lead into teaching.

Purposeful play is the best way to learn something.  Skill work is the best way to master something.

Start with a game, lead into skill work, finish with a game.

Right now, I'm trying to teach my basketball player how cut and move better defensively and how to be lower and more explosive offensively.  I'm trying to teach my soccer player how to shift her body offensively to shift her defenders body.

I used to say, 'Let me show you something,' or, 'let me teach you something.'  Now I just say, 'Let's play.'

When I try to teach them first, I sometimes get a positive response and I sometimes get an eye roll.  When I try to play with them first, I usually get a smile.  This happens with my own kids and the teams that I coach.  Instead of trying to start with something serious, I start with something fun.  The something fun is pre-planned to lead into something serious and after some time of fun play, it's been much easier to transition into skill work.

After I beat my basketball player a few times by being low and explosive and because she isn't moving as efficiently as she can defensively, I'll teach her the moves that I'm using to beat her.  Then, I'll show her how to move more efficiently so that she has a better chance to stop me.  I do the same with my soccer player.

With my young teams, I might start practice with who can score from kicking the furthest away; it's a lot more fun and engaging than the static stretching I used to do or high knees and karaoke running.  With my high school basketball teams, I might challenge a player to a game of horse or a shooting challenge.  After the game or challenge, we will work on striking the ball properly or shooting form.

Kids want to play.  They want to have fun.  They also learn that winning, performing well, and the positive recognition from a job well done is fun.  We have to be smart about how to get them to do the work that we know they need for them to have the results that they want.  As they get older, I teach more and more the importance of practice to become the best that they can be.  I teach grit. I teach growth mindset.  But first I teach them how to have fun, how to enjoy the game, and teach them how to fall in love with the game and the competition.

Start with fun - it is 'just a game.'

Be The Foundation

Coach Urban Meyer called it, 'Living above the Line.'  We have to model and set the example for the behavior, attitudes, habits, work ethics, and character that we teach and expect from our athletes. We have to bring it every day.  If we can't, who will?  If we can't, we risk losing it all.

Coaching is a hard job.  Leading is a hard job.  You have to be the brick that holds everything together and you have to be the brick that everybody else stands on.

Make sure that you are taking care of yourself so that you can take care of others.  Find ways to reset after tough days.  Find sources of inspiration that can keep you going when it gets tough.

Find ways to get away and calm your mind during those hard stretches of practices or games when the mood in the room gets low.

Find people that fill your bucket and bring you peace, joy, and positive energy when you need it.  Find ways to remove yourself from people who bring you negative energy when you don't need it.

Again, protect yourself and take care of yourself.  Your athletes need you at your best if you want to get their best from them.