A Coach's Diary

I just came to a terrifying realization. I am the decisive element for my team. My approach to EVERYTHING creates the climate. My daily mood and interactions make the weather. As a coach, I have the power to make or break my athletes. As a coach, I have the power to make an athlete’s life miserable or full of joy. As a coach, I can be a tool of torture and pain or a source of inspiration and encouragement. I can hurt or help, humiliate or humor, harm or heal. In everything, every day, it is my response that decides whether a conflict or crisis will escalate out of control or de-escalate. And in everything I do, every day, I impact how my athletes believe in themselves or doubt themselves. I impact whether they live and play with peace and confidence or live and play with anxiety and fear. ... You can substitute teacher for coach , students  for athletes, and classroom for team. But you can't substitute any thing for the impact that a leader, a coach, or a teacher has on their athle...

When I was growing up, I hated playing against a team called the Razorbacks. They were the best team in the league, and they would let you know it. They would talk trash to you, they would foul you hard, and their parents were the loudest in the stands. There are some teams I didn’t mind losing to, but the Razorbacks were not one of them. They would beat you and then rub it in your face. As much as I didn’t like them, the Razorbacks brought the best out of us. They pushed us harder and farther than we could push ourselves. We eventually got to the point where we could play with them and beat them, and that was the best feeling as a young athlete. Finally beating them taught me that by having a goal and working hard for that goal, I could achieve my dreams. They taught me that adversity is a part of everyone’s journey, and how to plan for adversity and losses in my goal setting process. COMPETITION REVEALS THE GREATNESS THAT IS ALREADY WITHIN YOU. They also taught me that some people ar...

There is a saying that winning cures all problems. We praise winners, and we criticize or dismiss the losers. When you are winning, everyone is happy. When losing comes, so do the excuses, finger-pointing, and blaming. The best teams and the best teammates learn how to manage both winning and losing in a productive way. I say learn because managing winning and losing effectively can take time.  When you have momentum and when you are winning, try not to get too high. Stay humble, keep working hard, and keep making the next, right play. When you are losing, don't get too down. Stay hungry and confident, and find ways to make the next, right play. Success in sports and life are all about making the next, right play. But doing the right thing is easier when you have momentum and when everything is going your way. Anybody can be a great teammate when things are going great. The best teammates can be a light in darkness and do the right thing when nothing is going right and hope is lost...

Every team has great teammates who bring out the best in each other. Every person has talents and gifts, and every person has flaws. The best teams bring out the gifts and talents of each teammate, and the best teams cover up for each other's flaws. The best teammate I ever had was a guy named Dee. I played college basketball with Dee. When Dee was a freshman, he was younger than all of us, smaller, and slower than all of us. Our coach almost made him sit out and redshirt his freshman year, but he worked his way onto our roster. Dee didn't play much our freshman year, but he was our hardest worker, and he made practice fun. He was always talking and always bringing energy and enthusiasm. He never stopped talking, in a positive way, in practice. He was always clapping, always cheering, and always encouraging us. He brought out the best in all of us. We were a better team because he was in our locker room, and we were better people because he was in our life. Dee was a living exa...

NFL champion Andrew Whitworth said, “How you handle attention and success, or how you handle negativity or negative times and adversity, and how you are willing to stand up and own those moments are things you can’t know about yourself until you have walked through them and experienced them.” Boxing great Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” We live life and we make decisions. Some of those decisions work out great, and many of them don’t. But we have to continue to live life with courage through the good times and the bad. Peter Drucker is known as The man who invented management . He once said: “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection, will come even more effective action.” Reflection is about careful thought. In an article for the Harvard Business Review, executive coach Jennifer Porter wrote: "Reflection gives the brain an opportunity to pause amidst the chaos, untangle and sort through observatio...

Sports and life include challenges and setbacks. No matter what your goals are, adversity should be an expectation and not a surprise. Some of those struggles and challenges are the people who we play with and compete against. It would be great if everyone we play with and against were great to us, supportive, and displayed amazing sportsmanship, but opponents, and even some teammates, can be mean, rude, cruel, and ugly. It is important to learn how to deal with difficult people in a positive way, and it is equally important to have enough courage and confidence to keep going when adversity comes. As followers of Jesus, we have even more challenges because we have higher standards that we are called to live up to. Early in the book of Matthew, Jesus taught his disciples a series of blessings called The Beatitudes during his famous Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount was given early in his ministry. Jesus began preaching when he heard that John the Baptist, the preacher in t...