A Coach's Diary

"Always seek to do your very best. It does not matter what the rest of the world thinks, but it is of prime importance, however, what you think." Sherri Coale, the women's basketball coach at the University of Oklahoma, has this quote hanging in her office. She says that it is important to find your voice and to measure  yourself by your own standard of excellence instead of waiting for the world to weigh in on whether or not you are measuring up to their standards. Everyone has an opinion on everything: - What we do - Where we go - How we look Thoughts and opinions of others can get noisy, but we have to learn how to keep the rest of the rest of the world out of our own heads and shield yourself from their opinions. It is part of our job as coaches and teachers to help our kids learn how to find their own voice, navigate through the ups and downs of life, and ultimately not need us as much as they get older and so that they can pass on those lessons to ...

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...

I'm always looking for ways to better and better maximize my practice times.  In this short clip, OU women's coach Sherri Coale talks about the 5 things they do at OU every practice.  I believe in these 5 things completely, and aside from having live time to 'play,' these 5 are definitely everyday 'must-haves' in my practice as well. 1 – Shoot - Make shots, win games - Game shots, game spots, game speed The greatest plays in all the world make no difference whatsoever if you can’t make a 3, make a jump shot, finish a layup. Practices shooting the shots that you expect to get in the games. Be good at the things that happen a lot, and how can you be good if you don’t practice shooting? 2 – Defensive Transition – Contest EVERY shot - No layups | no uncontested shots | make teams shoot over you Protect the basket and stop the ball so that you don’t give up easy baskets.   3 - Rebounding – No second shots -   No second chance shots...

As coach Sherri Coale, head women's basketball coach at OU, explains below, we are 'telling' our kids everything that we know and what to do instead of 'asking' them what they know or see on the court.  She talks about the power of 'questions' and how effective asking them questions can be on their learning process.  I really took away the part where she mentioned how to 'gradually teach your kids to be convicted about they do' through questions and their answers.

What's Your Monster and How Do You Feed It? When you start winning games as a coach, the feeling of success can create a monster where you allow winning to become your benchmark or measurement of success.  Whenever you tie your satisfaction solely to wins and losses, it's dangerous because it's really easy to start basing all of your decisions on how if affects your winning instead of doing what's best for the kids you lead and their overall growth and development as people. It's important for a coach to make sure winning isn't the main measurement for success in your program, and that you have your own definition of success that drives your work everyday.  Below, OU women's head coach Sherri Coale talks about what she uses as her measurement of success. John Wooden has famoulsy coined his own definition of success.  Below are two quotes and a short poem from Coach Wooden: "Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfac...