A Coach's Diary

I was listening to Mike and Mike on the radio, when they talked about former Ohio State quarterback, Terrell Pryor, and his transformation into one of college football's best quarterbacks into one of the NFL's rising stars at the wide receiver position. What really stood out to me was when they mentioned that Randy Moss has been mentoring Pryor, and the advice that Moss gave to Pryor about having tunnel vision throughout the process.  The quote is below: “Tunnel vision,” Pryor said. “Stay in tune, block out anything outside and keep that tunnel vision and go forward, no matter what happens. Sometimes games are gonna be bad, sometimes things are gonna happen that you don’t want and he said, ‘Just keep on going forward because it’s a long season and there’s a lot of plays to be made.’ He said, ‘Just make sure when the ball comes to you make the play, period.’ That’s the type of stuff we talk about all the time.” For me as a coach, it was great timing to reinforce ...

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 stumbled across an amazing blog at SamuelThomasDavies.com .  He is a self-proclaimed scout of the leading edge of the human sciences for what’s new, surprising, and important in life and business.   This a really good article on how coach Bill Walsh turned the San Francisco 49ers from a 2-14 team to Super Bowl Champions in just 3 years. According to Walsh's process and the article, the 3 steps are to success are: Step 1.  Choose an  action  and an  attitude that will make the highest possible contribution toward your goal – THE ONE THING. Step 2.  Give yourself instructions to follow. Step 3.  Commit to your action and attitude for a minimum of 66 days. A brief summary, along with the 3 steps listed above is simple: focus on the process, I identify your ONE BIG THING, and be detailed oriented with consistency and you too can find success in coaching and in life. You can get a more detailed summary of his article after the ...

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.

You can't wait for the perfect moment because the moment will never be perfect. Prepare the best you can, jump, and have faith that you will have a parachute that will catch you.  You will probably get some scrapes along the way, but if you prepare the right way and have faith, the parachute will catch you! The quote above from Bill Parcells was taken from an article written by   Jenny Vrentas  for  Monday Morning Quarterback on SI.com and you can read it in it's entirety  here . The basis of the article is about Bill Parcells and his mentorship of Brissett since  his high school days in Florida.  A good read overall on the purpose of staying ready no matter what your present position is, because you are always 'One Snap' from getting in the game. Thanks to Hoopthoughts.BlogSpot.com for the reference to this article.

- Google has the search engine - Colonel Sanders had KFC and one secret chicken recipe. - Walt Disney had a brother who got him work in an art studio - Sam Walton had a father-in-law who loaned him $20,000 to start his first retail business The basis early in the book, ‘The One Thing’ by Gary Keller is that they key to getting extraordinary results is to find ‘THE ONE THING’ that will make the biggest impact on your company (or team’s) success.  They show that ‘THE ONE THING’ shows up time and time again in the lives of successful people companies, whether it’s a company that focuses on one part of their business or a successful person who had one person in their life who made a significant difference along the way.  ---------------------------------------------------- “Success demands singleness of purpose.” - Vince Lombardi - ----------------------------------------------------- Keller tells that through technology and innovation, the doors to the wo...