A Coach's Diary

You can make your dreams come true by doing three things: Have a goal, make a plan, stick to the plan. Nick Saban is one of the best college football coaches of all time. I heard him speak once, and he said the key to success and winning championships come down to those three things: goals, plans, and discipline. He said you first have to have a vision or a goal: What do you want to do? Write it down on paper or in your phone. Second, you have to create a plan: What are 3-5 things you need to do to make this happen? Write those down on paper or in your phone. He said the third part is the hardest: Do you have the discipline to stick to the plan? Coach Saban said discipline is where most people fail. Most people won’t take the time to write down their goals or they won’t take the time to think out and write out a plan. Even if they do that, most people will quit on their plan because of a lack of discipline: “ It’s too hard,” “I’m too tired,” and “I don’t feel like it ,” ar...

Great advice!!  Sometimes you aren't playing simply because there is somebody better than you in front of you; and that is OKAY!! The highest difference between club ball and school ball is 1 - You pay the club coach, you don't pay the school coach 2 - If you don't play on a club team, you can change teams/coaches.  You can't do so (as easily) with school ball. So as former NBA champion Shane Battier once said, play so good that your coach CAN'T take you out of the game.   It's not equal opportunity - its who is going to give us the best chance to win and we have to teach our kids how to be a part of team and that sometimes that means we are the best player and sometimes that means that our role is to cheer them on from the bench.   We have to teach them to work hard in and out of practice to get better, and that while we might be working hard, there just might be somebody better - and that is OKAY!

Youth sports is about fun, creating an active life-style, and teaching lessons through games. It is important to teach competition and to teach early on that there is a winner and a loser, but its important to do that within context.  Teach winning and losing in terms of strengths and weaknesses, in terms of work ethic and commitment, and in terms of how to humbly deal with success and how to appropriately bounce back from defeat. As long as a kid keeps playing, as long as a kid keeps improving, and most importantly, as long as a kid keeps having fun, then good things will happen.

I'm always looking for actions and a system for the 'play after the play.'  The play after the play is what your team does when the play called breaks down.  What is their default offense? Some coaches run motion, some run Dribble Drive, some run flex, and some run side ball-screens.  I would love to be a motion coach whose athletes knew how to read and react the defense without some set and predictable pattern.   'Pappy' is an offensive system and philosophy that I received from the Twin Rivers girls basketball team.  Its based on driving the ball and how the athletes can read and react to the defense off the drive.  I like it a lot because its simple and practical and just basketball.  Its a natural way to create consistency in your team's reaction to how to move together. Read about PAPPY by clicking the link below: PAPPY - What to do on the drive

1 – Have Fun The number 1 goal for a youth league should be that the kids have so much fun that they want to play again next year.  The league, the referees, each coach, and each parent should understand their role in making sure that their kid has a great experience.  While keeping score is important, and understanding early that there is a winner and a loser is important, the most important thing is just having fun playing the game and learning to love the game, learning to love being active, and learning how to play with their friends.  A big part of that is helping them learn how to handle both success and failure.  We have to teach the kids how to accept success in a way that is gracious and humble and in a way that encourages continued hard work to continue to have that success.  We have to teach and model for them how to accept failure and adversity as teaching tools for life, and to use setbacks to teach them the importance of working hard in practice ...

"Be so good that people will pay so much money to come watch you play.    And not just win, but play at such a way that everybody who was at the game goes back and says, “You’re not going to believe this.    You have to go watch these women play." Geno Auriemma talks about: - How he got into coaching - Lying in the interview process at UCONN - The lack of resources at UCONN when they got there - Selling the kids on trust and the fact that they will build something - Getting Rebecca Lobo - 6 high school Americans by the 3 rd year - The frenzy behind UCONN - The level of awareness it placed on women’s basketball and women’s sports - $1 million budget to over $23 million dollar budget - Be so good that people will pay so much money to come watch you play.  And not just win, but play at such a way that everybody who was at the game goes back and says, “You’re not going to believe this.  You have to go watch these women play.

The following is an excerpt on the importance of discipline from Dean Smith and his book, A Coach’s Life. If a head coach has conviction, the most naturally disciplined group on any campus will be his athletic team because team members are used to sacrificing a certain amount of peer acceptance in seeking excellence.  I’m convinced that our work habits and tough practices instilled a certain mind-set and mental toughness in our players, and that why we avoided problems.  From 1967 to 1969 we had so many close games – and generally won them in the last minute – that our players developed a deep pride in the program.  They were committed, they worked awfully hard, and they had high expectations.  I think it prevented a lot of dissension. “The really free person in society is the one who is disciplined,” I told our players.  What I meant was, true freedom results from having choices.” The person who is more disciplined is the person who creates optio...

“If I’m asking my players to improve, I have to be improving” - Mike Neighbors Even us coaches, especially us coaches, have to find ways to get better every day and every year for our players.   It’s important to take a step back at the end of each season to self-assess your performance.   It’s important to assess your strengths and your weaknesses.   It’s important to have a plan on how to grow your strengths to a level of mastery, while growing your weaknesses.   Each off-season find at least one area that you want to grow in as a coach - set plays, zone defense, a new press, new 1 on 1 drills etc.  Master something new this off-season, learn something new this off-season, and bring something new because your kids and your teams need you to. We ask our kids to improve, and each NBA great talks about how they come back with something new each year; so should we as coaches.  Invest in yourself and in your craft.

Geno Auriemma was asked why players don't do what coaches ask.  Here was his response: I had a conversation with the parent of an incoming 9 th grade student last week, and it was centered around him coming to meet his new teachers and his lack of wanting to speak with them.  He is a shy and quiet kid who just does not like casual conversation.  I told him that communication is an important skill to grow and learn for so many ways. Communication is the key to everything as a coach and a leader.  Nobody knows what is going on in your head – you have to communicate in a way that they understand fully what you expect and in a way that they can do fully what you expect.  A lack of clear communication of expectations is one of the quickest and biggest ways to create a disconnect between player and coach.  I heard Geno Auriemma once say that a kid either can’t do what you want her to do or just won’t do what you want her to do.  I think tha...

During our 2 week professional development leading into the new school year, we had an inspirational speaker come in to talk to us about maintaining our well-being as teachers and living 'our best life' so that we are able to give our students and athletes our A-game every day.  Early in his lecture, he brought up this scenario: "Imagine, 20-30 years from now, a few of your former students or former athletes are sitting around at a bar, or a coffee shop, or a birthday party.  Do they even remember you?  Do they mention you?  And if you are brought up in conversation, what would you want them to say about you and their time with you?" As speaker Alex Saenz then told us that morning, every day you are on stage for your legacy.  We are living, every day, our legacy.  What legacy are you living?  What legacy are you leaving to the one's you serve and lead? He also stated that we all build a reputation and that your students and your peers not...

It is very important in today's sports culture to make sure that you keep positive relationships with your parents.   To get the most out of your kids, having the support of their parents can go a long way.  Parents are more involved and vocal in their children's athletics these days, so keeping them properly informed on their child and the team's development is beneficial. The website, CoachAD.com has some really good articles and information on building and running a successful program, and they recently posted an article on how to build and maintain positive relationships with the parents in your program.  Below are the 8 tips that they gave.  You can read about them more in-depth here . 1. Have a parent-coach communication plan in place. 2. Communicate your plan to parents, players and coaches 3. Build a solid level of trust. 4. Give parents ownership in your program.  5. Be clear and concise when you engage in parent-coach communication. ...

Below are my notes from a speech by Dr. Jim Loehr on the X’s and O’s of Building Character.  You can see the video in its entirety below. Our first responsibility is to use sports to build character.    There is a huge link between building character and performance outcome. Character is a Muscle To Grow Building character is just like building your muscles.   - You place demands on the muscle by investing energy in it - Consistent energy investment spawns growth That is exactly how you build the muscles of character. Organize Your Life You have to organize your life and make the investments that allow those muscles of character to actually shine and you eliminate the blaming, excuses, and selfishness. Character in action is why we are all here, and when it happens, highlight it. Ways To Build Character - Have a theme for the day/week - Have each player identify a character muscle, such as accountability or patience or focus and focus o...

On a random Facebook post on the topic of implementing Ralph Miller's 8 Drills For a Fundamental Practice, someone in the comments mentioned a book regarding Ralph Miller's college basketball coach, the legendary Phog Allen.  In the book it states how the inventor of basketball, Dr. James Naismith, ‘ was very much against sport being anything but a human development tool to enhance physical well-being, social acumen, and spiritual growth, truly the educational model. ' After doing some research on Dr. Naismith’s beliefs on the true purpose of sports, I ran across this article from Aleteia.org in which it discusses in good detail Dr. Naismith's vision and mission for athletics and the role it can play in developing young people's lives, especially in relation to becoming a better Christian. The articles states that Naismith was convinced that, “ he could better exemplify the Christian life through sports than in the pulpit ” and sought to “ develop the ...

I follow a really good page on Facebook called Herb on Hoops where a lot of coaches come together to discuss the strategy, to share ideas, and to discuss the ‘issues of the day.’ Recently, there was a post regarding AAU basketball, and as many ‘old school’ coaches do when this topic arises, many complained that the kids are playing too many games in the summer and not spending enough time developing their skill.  One coach had some really good thoughts on the necessity of combining the drills, vision, and development of a skill trainer while teaching the IQ necessary to have success in this team game.  Some of the thoughts outlined in his posts are: - Sacrificing Growth and Development For Wins Now By Focusing On Schemes and Sets Rather Than Building Skill - Winning Leads To Validation, Not Necessarily To Player Development or Level Of Coaching - Players Need the Development Of Training To Become Their Best - The Best Trainers Help Grow Players Overall Game...

“At its best, criticism can do exactly what its supposed to do: motivate, educate, and inspire.  But when it seems mean and destructive, it can break spirits, damage companies, and even ruin careers.” - Hendrie Weisinger The Power of Positive Criticism Is your teaching/coaching building athletes up and making them better, or is it tearing them down? There is a difference between ‘giving everybody a trophy’ and riding your athletes unfairly and unjustifiably.  The best coaches engage and inspire their athletes.  They make their athletes want to learn, want to get better, want to WORK for success.

- How can we be intentional in making this process magical for our athletes and their families? - How can we be intentionally ‘plus’ the school experience for our athletes and their families? I include families because how we treat the girls we have impacts, not only them, but their families.  We have a girl who basketball was her ‘second sport’ who wants to be a basketball player.  Her parents are now signing up her younger sister in basketball so that she can one day be in our program.  Because of how we treated one girl, her younger sister now wants to play basketball and her mother wants to make that happen because she knows that we will take care of her!  How cool is that?

(Harish Balasubramani/Illustrations director) The following article is something that I will share with all of my managers!   It is a really good look at the value and importance of a really good manager if you realize that you are more than ‘just a manager.’   Tony Luftman was a manger on the 1995 UCLA men’s basketball team that won a National Championship.  One thing that stuck out to me was how he feels that he was a big part of that team, even though he never played in a game.  I want all of my managers to feel that included every season as well.  You can find the original article here . Like clockwork, Jim Harrick’s cell phone buzzed on April 3. So did those of other members of UCLA’s 1995 men’s basketball championship team, like Ed O’Bannon, Tyus Edney and Steve Lavin. Another year, another text from Tony Luftman, a manager on the 1995 team, with the same simple message: “Thank you for letting me be a part of your team.” But more th...

Photos of St. Joseph boys basketball coach Gene Pingatore, who has 999 career wins as of Feb. 9, 2017.   The following article is about the career of Coach Gene Pingatore, a legendary coach at St. Joseph’s high school.   I was first exposed to him as the coach in the movie Hoop Dreams.   This gives a very different side of coach than what was presented in the documentary.   Below are some key parts that I took away.   You can read the article in full here or after the jump. -  Kathy Taylor excused herself Thursday at St. Joseph High School because Taylor knew if she talked any longer about the generosity of her boss, high school basketball legend Gene Pingatore, the tears would begin to flow. -  The same emotion oozed out of the woman behind the welcome desk who, unsolicited, shared the memory of Pingatore sending her son souvenirs at the hospital without even knowing him. Longtime St. Joseph assistant Bill Riley, at Pingatore's side for 34 y...