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...

Amos Alnozo Stagg; Chicago football coach on why he coached. “I have made the young men of America my ministry.  I have tried to bring out the best in the boys that I have coached.  I truly believe that many of them have become better Christians and citizens because of what they have learned on the athletic field. “You must love your boys to get the most out of them and do the most for them.  I have worked with boys whom I haven’t admired, but I have loved them just the same.  Love has dominated my coaching career as I am sure it has and always will that of many other coaches and teachers.” Coach Wooden on why he stayed in coaching. “I feel that my love for young people is the main reason I have stayed in coaching and have refused positions that would have been far more lucrative.” THEY ASK ME WHY I TEACH | Glennice L. Harmon (1948) They ask me why I teach, And I reply, Where could I find more splendid company? There sits a statesman, Str...

I have just decided to re-read John Wooden’s autobiography They Call Me Coach, and to complete it before the start of our basketball season.  Our first official practice is October 19th, so I have to get moving.  Here are excerpts from the forward to this book, written by Bill Walton.  There are so many gems in this forward about Coach Wooden, the type of man he is, and what he believed in, from the eyes and experience of one of his most accomplished players. Coach Wooden is a humble, private man who has selflessly devoted his life to make other people's lives better. With John Wooden, there is never an end to anything.  His ability to always be about what's next, always about the future, enables him to lead an incredibly active, constructive, positive and contributing life to this very day. Today, John Wooden is still our coach in so many ways.  He there with us each and every day, pushing, shaping, molding, challenging, driving us to be better,...

All of this was done in the subtlest of ways.  While our practices were the most demanding endeavors that I’ve ever been a part of – so physically, emotionally, mentally, and psychologically taxing – there was always the sense of joy, of celebration, and of people having fun playing a simple game.   Always positive, always constructive, John Wooden drove us in ways and directions that we are not aware of, always with the goal of making us better.   It is never about him, never about the struggle for material accumulation, but always about individual skill and personal development within the framework of the team, the game, and UCLA.    Our practices, our lives are constantly structured around the four laws of learning: demonstration, imitation, correction, and repetition. And repeat we do – everything, every day, until we have become John Wooden ourselves.