A Coach's Diary

GREAT READ FOR YOUTH COACHES.  THIS WAS COPIED FROM A BASKETBALL PAGE ON FACEBOOK AND WAS WRITTEN BY A HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS BASKETBALL COACH. ..... I know a lot of you ask about the specifics of strategy and ask about plays and drills and what not. But allow me to make a plea from us high school coaches who will get these young players you are currently coaching. PLEASE HELP THEM LOVE THE GAME. Whatever that means, at the end of the day, and by the time they move on to high school they still love the game, then from our (high school coaches) perspective you have done your job.  I say this because I cant tell you how many freshman we get who come into our school who played in junior high but didn't have a good experience or didn't like it and are not excited to play high school. Dont get me wrong its nice when incoming freshman have been taught to play ball and know the game, but more often times than not we need kids who are eager to play and grow their knowledge o...

Sabrina Ionescu has been smashing all kinds of records in the women’s college basketball world and has become a great ambassador for the women’s game.  She recently spoke at Kobe Bryant’s memorial and her speech was moving and inspirational.  Here is a video of the speech, and below is the transcript from the speech. “Growing up, I only knew one way to play the game of basketball: fierce, with obsessive focus. I was unapologetically competitive. I wanted to be the best. I loved the work, even when it was hard, especially if it was hard. “I knew I was different, that my drive was different. I grew up watching Kobe Bryant game after game, ring after ring, living his greatness without apology. I wanted to be just like him, to love every part of the competition, to be the first to show up and the last to leave, to love the grind, to be your best when you don’t feel your best and make other people around you the best version of themselves. And to wake up and do it aga...

Once you get to the competitive level, you realize that continued sports success is as much of a grind as anything.  It's a grind on the athlete, the parents, and the family as a whole.  The second you stop working or slow down, somebody who is working harder will catch up and pass you by. There is a top 5 high school girls basketball player who said, 'There are a lot of girls who were good when we first started playing on the circuit who aren't as good now.  You could tell who was working and who wasn't.  The ones who were working hard are still going strong.' I know there is a range of people who follow us here, from younger athletes and parents to those in the middle of this grind.  It is important to pace yourselves early but to understand that to make it to college, the pros, and to the elite of the elites, it is a grind and that takes talent, effort, mental toughness, grit, and some luck. There is nothing easy about being great at anything,...

I am a girl dad, and I coach all of my young daughters in multiple sports.  Someone once asked me why I thought playing sports were so important for girls.  I said there are so many things that I love about sports personally and I love the many life lessons that my girls learn by playing sports. Discipline - Doing what you are supposed to do when and how you are supposed to do it. Preparation - Showing up every practice prepared and ready to work. Grit - The ability to deal with adversity and keep going. Focus - Being able to stay in the moment at practice and at games. Teamwork - Being able to work with others toward a common goal. Making friends - We call our teammates our friends.  When we get a new teammate, we say we have a new friend. Public speaking - Every first practice and every time my young team gets a new teammate, we go around the room and tell our name and where we go to school.  We learn how to speak up snd use our...

I was at the gym when a group of girls, had to be 3rd or 4th grade, were getting ready to play in what I found out be their championship game. On one end, 6 girls from one team were there.  They were playing around.  Practicing their dribbling and playing keep-away.  They were smiling and they were happy.  'This is what youth sports should be about,' is what I thought to myself. On the other end was one girl from the other team.  She was shooting layups.  She wasn't really smiling; she wasn't smiling at all.  She had a different look; she had a focused look.  Her dad came up and started rebounding for her.  She did some layups on one side, then he pointed to the other side and she started doing lay-ups on the other side. It was funny because then I saw the other parents start to slowly look down at their daughters' competition.  They stopped smiling so much and their conversations started to slow.  You could see it in their ey...

Confidence in the game comes from putting the work in during practice and on your own.  If you put the time in doing something over and over again in practice, you will feel more comfortable performing that skill in the game. But if you really want to get ahead, don't wait until practice to work on your game.  Work on your game BEFORE practice and OUTSIDE of practice so that when practice starts, you are better and more ready to perform the drills and more ready to compete. Change how you look at practice.  It is a chance to work on your game, it is a chance to improve how you play as a team, but it is also a chance to COMPETE, and anytime that there is a chance to compete, you want to make sure that you are ready and prepared to perform. NBA legend Kevin Garnett recently said that he would get to practice 30-45 minutes early to work on stuff on his own.  Then he would practice with the team.  During practice, they would COMPETE with each other...

ATHLETES: When your coach is pushing you and is demanding more from you and you don't know why, just understand that your coach is trying to help you get to a new level and to play at a new level. Coach Cal said that his job is to make his athletes uncomfortable.  That means not coaching them where they are now; it means coaching them to where he sees they need to go and where they are capable of being.  This means that they have not been there, which means they will be uncomfortable all of the time.   He says that their job is to learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.   He sets up situations where they struggle so that they learn how to deal with it.   He sets up situations where they are feeling pain, whether its through conditioning or anything else that takes them to their limits, because it's how they learn about themselves. They just continue to raise the bar, and it doesn't mean kicking, punching and s...

During a 2004 game, Alex Cora of the Dodgers fouled fourteen straight pitches before hitting s homerun.   That took determination, concentration, and grit. Sometimes you have to battle through the tough pitches to get the pitch that you want. Life is full of situations where it seems easier to give in than to battle it out, pitch after pitch, after pitch. Sometimes you have to wait your turn, but you don't wait passively; you wait by working as hard as you can do that when your opportunity comes, you are prepared and ready to take full advantage. Shaq told a story that he told his son, a college basketball player, about the ups and downs of sports.  He said that your sports career is full of peaks and valleys.  Some practices, games, and seasons are full of peaks; great moments where you are leading the team and dominating practices and games.  Some practices, games, and season are full of valleys; the tough times where we struggle to make plays, or we...

Great coaches do everything they can to bring in and retain the BEST PEOPLE. It's hard to replace your best players and its especially hard replacing your best leaders, but author and school leader Todd Whitaker wrote that one of single most precious commodities on a team is an open spot, and this is especially precious for a new coach to a new team who is trying to change a culture.  That open spot could be an opening for a player, a coach, a manager, or a trainer, and the quickest way to raise team expectations, morale and your culture is to bring in GREAT people every chance you get. When we bring in new people, its important to keep them enthusiastic by spreading their energy and their excitement to the other members of the team.  When a new player first comes on, they are eager to please and eager to show what they can do.  They come in early, they work hard, and they stay late.  They have to do what they have to do to earn their spot.  Use that energy ...

A lot of coaches don't really sleep. When they finally stop watching film, stop analyzing the last practice, stop preparing for the next practice, and stop looking at their budgets, and grades, and fundraising, they close their eyes and that is when the thoughts just don't stop. - I should have done this ... - I should have done that ... - Could I have done this better? - I should have done that better ... - I hope __________ knows I love them and just want what's best for them ... - I hope that _________ knows that I care about their son/daughter and I just want what's best for their kid ... We close our eyes at night, but it's hard to get to sleep and to stay asleep. We never stop thinking about the game and our kids. And the crazy part is, we never stop thinking about them and caring about them and worrying about them when they are gone. If you have a coach that cares for your athlete and invests in them, thank them and appreciate them. If they can ...

Sherri Coale was a high school coach at Norman High School in Oklahoma before becoming a very successful coach at Oklahoma University.  Here she talks about your influences when you begin coaching, how to measure success, how do you want your athletes to feel when they are coached by you, how to ask the right questions, and how to get teammates to buy-into each other. You Are Most Like Your Loudest Influence Starting Out She talked about the evolution of her coaching career.  Coach Coale said at the beginning of your career, you are most like your loudest influence.  It could be your high school coach, your college coach, or the coach next door.  You have an idea of what you want to do and what kind of coach that you want to be, but you tend to lean more towards the style of the loudest or the most impactful coach around you. You have to find who you are and you have to find your own voice.  You are a little of a lot of different influences, but you have...

This is one of the best podcasts that I have listened to in terms of leadership.  Jon Gordon interviews Steve Jacobson (@Fairwaysteve1), the founder and CEO of Fairway Mortgage. It is full of takeaways, as Steve shares a lot of real-world, practical lessons.   He says that mortgages is what they do but not who they are.   He talks about creating an environment where his team is encouraged to win each day by being humble, aggressive, and willing to make mistakes and learn and grow from their mistakes.   He talks a lot about serving and helping others, focusing on today, and competing and growing every day.   He says the two things that he loves the most about the mortgage business is the pressure that you are under to perform, and that he gets to help and serve people. Below are my notes from the podcast. The Precious Present You are going to make mistakes if you are trying to do something great.   If somebody steals the ball from you...