A Coach's Diary

I was blessed to play college basketball at a great junior college where we finished in the top-10 in the country, and I was able to finish my college basketball career at a very competitive division 2 school. I had a great experience playing college basketball, but I do have two regrets. Those two regrets are my grades and work ethic. I tell every high school freshman that the best advice I can give you going into high school is to make all A's on your first report card. Not being more focused on and serious about my grades as a freshman and a sophomore is one of my greatest regrets. When I was a senior in high school, I was getting recruited by a few different Ivy League schools because of my academic test scores, and I even went on a couple of official recruiting visits to Ivy League schools, but when they did a deep dive into my grades, they saw that my grades as a freshman and sophomore would keep me from getting admitted. I could have gone to an Ivy League school to play spor...

Knowing what we know about Michael Jordan's competitiveness and work ethic, it is hard to believe that when he was growing up, his father said that Michael was mischievous and the laziest kid he had. Michael grew up the 4th out of 5 kids in Wilmington, North Carolina. Jordan's mother said, "You had to discipline him. He would test you to the limit. Michael was always getting into things." In The Last Dance, Michael said that when he was in the 9th grade, he got suspended three times in one year. He said that his father pulled him aside that summer and said, "You don't look like you are heading in the right direction. If you want to do all of this mischievous stuff, you can forget sports." Michael said that was all he needed to hear, and from then on he had tunnel vision and never got in trouble in school again, and that his father was a friend and a voice of reason who always drove and challenged him. We all need people in our lives like that. People who...

IMAGINATION is a God-given gift, but if it was fed dirt by the eye, it will be dirty. - D.A. Carson - Watch your thoughts because they become your words. - Watch your words because they become your actions. - Watch your actions because they become your habits. - Watch your habits because you are what you do. - What you do - everyday - becomes your destiny. God has given us all a lot of great gifts, and our  IMAGINATION  is one of the greatest gifts that He has given us. The tricky thing about our IMAGINATION is that we can use it for good just as easily as we use it for bad. Dr. Doug Gardner wrote, “One of the most overused clichés in sports is that 90% of performance is mental. The problem is that 90% of coaches and athletes spend 100% of their time working on the physical and fundamental aspects related to their sport. They often neglect and ignore the one area that ultimately separates successful athletes from those who do not reach their full potential. In realit...

One of the most influential coaches that I had in my life was my select soccer coach. I played multiple sports growing up. Basketball was my favorite sport, but soccer was my first sport. When I was 10, I knew nothing about the select soccer world, and neither did my parents when my rec soccer coach told my parents that I needed to try out with his son for a select team. He said that I had the talent and potential to take my game to the next level, and select soccer was the next step for athletes like me. The team held tryouts over the course of two weekends. After the first weekend, he had extended offers to about 75% of the athletes he wanted for his team. He told me that I had talent and potential but I was raw. I had never had any kind of skills training for soccer, so he was. I only played soccer because it was fun. I never saw professional soccer on TV, I didn't know anything about professional soccer, and I didn't know anything about select soccer. I thought soccer was a...

Every player that Michael Jordan has ever played with talks about his competitiveness and his drive to be great, and they talk about how he pushes his teammates to be great as well. In his book, Driven From Within , he said: "A leader has to be willing to sacrifice to help everyone else get to where a team needs to go. No one could take days off with the Bulls because I never took a day off. The leader sets the standard, and everyone has to live up to that standard." Michael Jordan said that he has taken that same approach at Brand Jordan. He said, "It all goes back to me, Tinker and Mark Smith. If we all agree to the standard, who is going to try to change that? We've built the standards. We're leading, not following. Whoever comes in has to live up to the same standard. They have to be as dedicated as I am. They have to put in the same effort. They have to have the same understanding of what we are about. If you don't have the same vision, then you're ...

Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. - James 1:2-4 I have been the best player on some teams, and I have come off the bench on others. I have been the star on the court, and I have been the star towel-waver cheering on my teammates. I have been a great teammate, and I have been an excuse-making bad teammate. What I have learned in my many experiences is that every experience gives me a chance to learn something new, and that I can be happy and have joy in any situation. When I was in college, I lost my starting spot and I was upset about it. I spent the next few practices pouting, but I learned some valuable lessons. First, I learned that nothing was given and that anything can be taken away. Second, I learned how important it is to work harder and compete harder than the person next to you. Finally, I learned how...

Have you ever been so afraid of something that you don’t do it at all or you don’t do your best? In a big game in the biggest tournament of the year, I was fouled with no time left, we were down by one point, and I had two free throws and the chance to win the game. It was my first time shooting free throws in a big moment like that, and I was very nervous. My heart was beating through my chest, and I could not stop my legs from shaking. I missed both shots, we lost, and I thought it was all my fault. I led my team in scoring, rebounding, and assists, but being in that moment was the scariest thing that I had been a part of, and I let that fear hold me back from being my best. If I could do it all over again, I would not focus on the fear - I would focus on love. Writer and speaker Jon Gordon says fear can sabotage you and keep you from living the life you want, but love casts out fear. He says that if you love something, you won’t fear it.  Athletes grow up dreaming about making g...

I can't count the number of conversations that I have had with players and their parents about their roles and playing time. Understandably, most people want more opportunities to play and contribute to their team's success. One of the first things you have to learn as a coach is you can't make everyone happy, and it is important to learn the same as a player and as a parent. In an activity used to address playing time, my coach in college once asked us all to write on a notecard how many minutes we felt like we should play in a game. He then collected all of the notecards and added up the minutes. A college basketball game is only 40 minutes long. This means that there are 200 minutes to share on each team because you can only have 5 people on the court at a time. When he added the numbers that we all wrote down, it was well over 200 minutes. This was an eye-opening experience about how many minutes there are in a game, and how important it is to earn the trust of the coac...

The two parts about middle school and high school coaching that gives me the most anxiety are tryouts and playing time. I want everyone to play, and I want everyone to have success. It is hard on me when I have to cut someone, and it is hard on me when I don't play someone as much as they would like, especially when they are good people who work hard. But spots on the team and playing time are earned, not given, and it is a coach's job to play the players that he/she feels are going to give the team the best chance to win. One of my coaches used to say that the bench is like a PIT and it is our job to work ourselves out of the PIT and onto the court. One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the story of Joseph. Joseph was one of Jacob's 12 sons, and his father loved him more than any of his other sons. When Joseph was 17 years old, he shared with his brothers two dreams that he had: in one dream, Joseph's brothers bowed to him, and in the second dream, the sun (father...

"I'm excited to try this tomorrow with my students!" I was reading a book called, Coaching for Equity ,  and the author said, "If we close conversations with an opportunity for the client to name what they've learned and how they feel at the end of the conversation and they say, "I'm excited to try this tomorrow with my students!" - then they bring a moment of awareness to the positive emotions that come up from learning, and they've increased their resilience. I thought, "How cool would it be if our athletes were this excited at practice? How cool would it be if our athletes said, 'I'm excited to try this tomorrow,' or, 'I'm excited to try this in the game?'" When I first started coaching, my head coach said something that has impacted the rest of my career. He said, "No one can get better if you think they suck, and no one will want to learn from you if they don't like you and if you don't like th...

Growing up, I would hear stories about how hard Michael Jordan practiced. Teammates and coaches all talked about how competitive he was in practice and how much he pushed everybody on his team. They talked about how he hated to lose in everything, even in card games, and when he would lose, he would make you keep playing until he would not only beat you but destroy you. The inspiring thing about Jordan to me was that he would challenge the best, people better at certain things than him, so that they could push him. He would challenge the best shooters to shooting competitions, card players to card games, and ping-pong players to ping-pong games. He wasn't afraid to lose. He knew that he had to lose to win. One of his coaches said that when they would do shooting drills, Jordan would never want to be on the team with the best shooters. This forced him to shoot under pressure. His coach said that if his team lost, Jordan would yell, "Run it back, run it back." He never wan...

Before every game, I say to my team, “We are going to do some great things out there. When we do, don’t get too high. Be consistent, and keep the momentum going by making the right, next play. We are also going to do some bad things out there. Don’t get too low. BOUNCE BACK by making the next right play.” We can say the same thing about life. We have seasons where everything is going right and every decision we make seems like the right decision. We also have seasons where it feels like nothing is right and every decision we make is the wrong decision. It is important to know that no matter what you have done, you can always BOUNCE BACK and get a fresh start. It can be a quick timeout in a game, or it can be a reset in life. Also know that God loves you and has a purpose for your life. The Bible is full of comeback stories, and one of the most impactful is how Saul became Paul and one of the most important people in Christian history. Saul was a Pharisee who persecuted the followers of...

Jason Preston was just drafted by the LA Clippers, but he wasn't a top recruit nor a star on his high school team. He only averaged 2 points per game in high school, and he was on the "C" team in prep school without any college offers. He made his own highlight tape and received an offer from Ohio University. Jason put himself on the national radar after scoring 31 points against Illinois, who was ranked #8 in the country, and now he is preparing for a career in the NBA. Jason is not the prototypical draft pick, but he said he is not surprised that he has made it to the NBA. Jason said that he dreamed of this and he worked for this. Jon Gordon asked him, "What would you tell kids who have a dream but it isn't looking good right now?" "Believe in yourself. You will have a lot of people tell you what they think you should do, but they can't live your life. You have to do what is best for you. That comes down to how you believe in yourself. You will be...

One of the teams that I was coaching this year had one a few tournaments in a row, and they started feeling good about themselves. They work hard and they are talented. But I feared that they would let their ego get in the way of getting better. When I was re-watching (again) The Last Dance, I heard  Coach Phil Jackson say, "You are only a success at the moment you perform a successful act. You have to do it again." I thought that this might be a great message for my team. Enjoy the moment. Enjoy and celebrate success, but understand that you can't live in that moment forever.  In 1992, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls became only the 4th NBA franchise to win back-to-back championships. Prior to the 1992 season, the team talked about the difficulties of repeating, but the 1992 team was even better than the championship team in 1991.  BJ Armstrong said,  "Starting with that season, I felt Michael Jordan never played basketball anymore. He just figured out how to w...

Everyday is a new day. Every day is a new opportunity to show up and be great. Joyce Meyer says "Whatever you do, do it with excellence, be a person of integrity, and keep strife out of your life."  Excellence is the quality of being outstanding or extremely good, but it is  not perfection. Excellence means doing the best you can with whatever you have. You might want to have a bigger role on your team, like starting or scoring more points, but until that happens, master the role that you have right now.  If you are going to do something, do it right. That means how you show up, how you work, how you listen. That also means how you act in the locker room, how you clean up the bench when the game is over, how you listen to and talk to your coaches, teammates, and referees. Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. The Bible says, "Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his way crooked will be found out (Proverbs 10:9...