A Coach's Diary

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...

Success Magazine just released its December issue, and John Wooden graces the cover.  Don Yeager wrote the cover story, using interviews of a few of the many athletes and coaches that Wooden influenced throughout his life.  Below, Dick Enberg talks about how powerful Coach Wooden’s influence was on anybody in his presence. You look at his eyes and see how he could be a tough disciplinarian even though he was a man of God," sportscaster Dick Enberg, a longtime friend, recalls.  "We see a lot of his photos from later in his life where he had that sheepish, sweet smile and innocence all over his face, but if you go back to his coaching days, his players knew what he meant when he burned a hole through them with those eyes of, at times, toughness.  If you stayed around him enough you learned an awful lot about life and yourself and how to be good.  You felt a responsibility to conduct yourself the way Coach would want you to behave if you were wearing one ...

Dick Vitale shares a story on how he reached out to several coaches when he was still a young high school coach and the advice and assistance John Wooden provided for Vitale and his career.  This story appeared in Success Magazine’s December issue in which Coach Wooden is the cover story, and is written by DonYaeger . The coach was also an active mentor, advocating on behalf of people and seeking out younger coaches he felt demonstrated a commitment to building character as much as constructing winning teams.  “When I was just starting out as a high school coach, I started reaching out to people I admired to find out a moment of their success with a young guy aspiring to be a coach on a collegiate level,” says National Collegiate Basketball Hall of fame member Dick Vitale.  “A lot of people, of course, never wrote back, but I was absolutely in awe when I opened the mail and realized I had received a response from the Wizard of Westwood [one of Wooden’s nicknames]...

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 ...