A Coach's Diary

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, teammate...