Monthly Archives: June 2012

4 Guidelines for Sports Families

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A few weeks back Coach Dawn wrote a post that I think should be invaluable to any sports family. Her notes on 6 Reasons Kids Quit Sports sparked a quick email conversation between the two of us. With two young boys of my own, ages 9 and 11, I continue to be very interested in what keeps kids motivated in sports, and what causes them to “burn out”, often at rather young ages.

Our family, meaning my wife and I, have been working with a few guidelines that we’re hoping will help combat “burn out”. We’ve both been coaches for a number of years, so naturally our children jumped into sports at a young age. We could have hardly prevented it, if we would have felt we needed to try. There’s been no study or formal testing of these guidelines. These are simply what we’ve been doing. And…we have no true data set…as we do not yet know for sure if our two boys will burn out or not. So, I submit them to you for your review…

GUIDELINE 1: They Can Play Any Sport They Want

At young ages, the more the better I think. Dr. David Geier’s writings assert the same thing. Have them play multiple sports. Not only will it help prevent burn out, but it may actually make them perform better in their favorite sports. As parents, it is understandable that we don’t like certain sports, or like some sports better than others, but maybe we shouldn’t overly influence what sports our kids choose. I think logical parameters would have to exist, two examples would be time and expense. I told Coach Dawn that if one of our boys decides he wants to take up base-jumping or jet-fuel racing, we might have to adjust this guideline!! But generally, let them pick anything they want to play, mainstream or not-so-mainstream, go to it!

GUIDELINE 2: They Do Not “Have” to Play Any Sport

This one is tough for us sometimes. When I was in high school, I played many sports, but if you asked me, I’d say I was a “football player”. That was my primary sport. Now I coach volleyball. My wife was a record holder as a collegiate swimmer and has coached swimming ever since. Guess which three sports our boys show very little interest in playing? We’d love to see them on the swim team, or at little league football, or into youth volleyball. But it’s OK that they are not. We’ve decided we’re not going to force them into our favorite sports, or into any sports. They will play what they want to play…not what we want them to play

GUIDELINE 3: One Sport at a Time

It’s rather obvious that you can now play just about any sport, all year round, at any age. Good or bad, it is a reality that sports are available all the time. It’s easy to fall into playing more than one sport at a time. This guideline is one that I feel pretty strongly about. It’s complicated, and maybe not fair, to have kids try to keep up with more than one sport. One winter we ignored this guideline. Our older boy wrestled and played basketball. Pretty soon he got real tired, every day. And didn’t always look forward to either practice…and eventually wasn’t even excited about the games or tournaments. It was just too much. There might be overlaps when one season ends and another begins, but we’re going to try hard to stick to one sports schedule at a time!

GUIDELINE 4: If They Start a Sport, They Must Finish that Sport

This means we will not allow them to quit mid-season. Kids often like to be involved in everything, so they might want to try something. And that’s all good, but we ask…no we make…them play it out for the season. Give it a chance for the duration of one season before deciding that it’s not for them. Furthermore, they’ve made a commitment to the team, and that is important to learn, even at a young age. So, barring extreme circumstances of course, we will make sure they fulfill that obligation.

There you have it. My Four Guidelines for Sports Families. I’d love to hear feedback. Tell me what you think, maybe you like them, maybe you feel they’re hogwash. In any case, the discussion is important. You hear story after story of the star athlete, with a bright promising future, who instead gives up the sport prematurely. As a college coach, I always hate to see that. It’s always a tragedy when a sport becomes a burden for an athlete. Sports are great for so many reasons, let’s try hard to make sure they stay great for the young athlete, for a long time!

Keep reading Coach Dawn Writes. Great stuff every post!!

Want more info on youth sports? Check out Y Is For Youth Sports: 5 Reasons Kids Should Play Sports and 4 Reasons Our Children Should Play Sports (Or My Love Letter To Athletics).

Today’s post was written by Randall Kreider, the Head Volleyball Coach at Elizabethtown College. As you can see, he’s a coach and a dad…please contact him with any questions.

6 Steps To Creating A Passionate Team Culture

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I just got finished running a leadership seminar with a group of high school athletes and gave them a bunch of words they could pick from that would describe leadership to them. Luckily one of the words they picked was passion. The season is too long, too hard, coaches are asking too much of their athletes for everyone not to be passionate about the program and the team. Passion makes the good times great and the bad times not so bad.

So how do we go about creating this atmosphere? Or does it just happen organically?

6 ways we can make passion a part of our program

Recruit the right people. Whatever you tell people in the recruiting process is who you’re going to end up with. If you tell your recruits that winning at all costs is central to your coaching philosophy, you’re going to get a different kind of kid than if you told them that you want “team-first” players. It’s our job as the coach to come up with a vision for the team and then go about putting it together.
Communicate. Letting our teams know what our coaching philosophy is will go a long way in making sure we’re all on the same page. Beyond that, giving your team a voice is helpful as well. There are many ways to do this, but the most common is to empower your captains.
Tend to the weeds. Who are the weeds on our teams? Those folks who are on the bench talking badly about their teammates out of the side of their mouths. Captains and team leaders who aren’t good leaders. Players who whine and complain about every little thing in the locker room. Eventually we’ll have to remove them from having power and influence with the rest of the team…which could mean removing them from the team altogether.
Work hard, play hard. I’ve got a good friend whose team has won their conference tournament for the last decade. They’ve made it to the Sweet 16 for the last five years. She’s a great coach who recruits very good players for her system. She is hard-nosed, focused, and doesn’t take crap from anyone. She also has a crazy hair day practice, and a crazy dress practice. Who says having fun and working hard don’t go together?
Be ambitious. Did your team finish sixth in conference last year? Now are you aiming for fifth? Boring! As this quote from Daniel Burnham says, “Make no little plans: they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” What gets our players fired up? Coaches who believe the sky truly is the limit. Coaches who challenge their view of what realistic expectations are. I believe players want to play for ambitious coaches…it gives them a reason to look forward to practice every day.
Take the long view. If your team finished last in conference this season, you guys probably aren’t winning a national championship the following year. But it can be in your sights. Of course we have to live in the present and prepare our teams for each competition, but we’ve also got to take the long view and see who are team has the potential to be in the future. Not only will that help us stay motivated to coach each and every day, it’ll help us as we’re bringing new blood to the program.

If you want to read more about this, check out 8 Rules For Creating A Passionate Work Culture over at Fast Company. Hopefully this got you fired up to get your team fired up…a passionate team is a dangerous team. Good luck!

9 Ways To Value The Game

Coaching philosophy, PracticeCoaching philosophy

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What does it take to be successful? How can we teach our players to value everything it takes to win consistently? Check out these nine traits I believe our athletes need in order to contribute to a team’s success.

Work ethic. I would hazard a guess that most athletes playing at high level collegiate programs are naturally talented. I would also guess that those same athletes were able to get by without giving full effort at some point in their career. But those athletes who are internally motivated to get better, will work harder. They understand that they may be talented, but they want to see just how talented they can be.
Proper execution. This requires focused practice…no one can perform a skill correctly without practicing diligently. Every now and then, I’ll run into a player who thinks they can mess around in practice and just turn it on in games. Proper execution begins in practice and ends in games.
Fortitude. Players with fortitude have strong minds and are resilient. They understand that ups and downs are embedded within athletics. I can’t think of a team I’ve coached that hasn’t ridden that roller coaster. Whether those teams won it all or didn’t win much at all, the players that fared the best were resilient.
Tenacity. If fortitude is strength of mind, tenacity is toughness of mind. In my opinion, working hard each and every day (even when they’re tired, even when they’ve got exams, even at the end of the season) requires a high level of mental toughness. Also, to properly execute a skill requires toughness…it’s just too easy to slack off in practice.
Taking responsibility. I coached a player at a camp once who was full of excuses. Each mistake she made was someone else’s fault: she’s never played that particular position before, Susie was distracting her, Becky wasn’t communicating with her. *sigh* I kept waiting for her to say, “my fault”…those are powerful words.
Enthusiasm. If you’ve been reading for a while, you know about my coaching crush on John Wooden and his Pyramid of Success. The cornerstones of his Pyramid are hard work and enthusiasm. Without passion and enthusiasm, I don’t believe our players will do the rest of the things required to be successful.
Competitiveness. I used to think that all athletes were naturally competitive, and I think most are, but I’ve started to see that sometimes they need to find a higher purpose from competition…not just competition for competition’s sake. Some of our athletes need to know how they matter in the grand scheme of things.
Preparedness. It’s practicing well and executing in competition. The purpose of practice is to prepare our athletes to compete. Not to drill, not to practice, not to play…but to compete.
Rest. This is probably the most underrated of all of these…by athletes and coaches. Our teams have a lot on their plates. They’re studying for classes, working, practicing, lifting, trying to have a social life, maintaining friendships…that’s a lot. Sometimes they need to just chill out and do nothing.

The inspiration for this post came from a post over on Hoop Thoughts, Values To Playing The Game.

3 Ways To Encourage Collaboration On Our Teams

Collaboration, Team chemistryTeam chemistry

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“Collaboration is hard.” –The Science of Teamwork

When I was a student, I greatly disliked group projects. There were many reasons, mostly stemming from my big-headed idea that I could do better all by myself. Then I figured out that everyone in the group was thinking the same thing! What we were really doing, according to the article I linked above, was cooperating, not collaborating.

What’s the difference? Cooperating means identifying a common goal and proceeding on an individual path which fits under the umbrella of the goal. Cooperation means the goal can be accomplished singly and then fit together neatly at the end. Cooperation, according to the article, means that each individual can be praised for their particular effort.

Collaboration is hard, but necessary, if our teams are to accomplish anything great. Collaboration is messy and sometimes emotional because it necessitates that give up their personal desires for the greater good of the team. So how do we take our teams from cooperating to collaborating.

3 ways to encourage collaboration on our teams

Give up individual goals. I know that we all talk to our players about their particular goals for the season…and that’s a good thing. But it’s not the first thing. If the team wins a national championship, but that player didn’t accomplish all of her goals, I’d hope she would see the season as a resounding success.

Emotional give and take. When I was a player, me and a friend (who also happened to be a teammate) where fighting for the same starting position. Both of us had to be adults about the decision that was going to be made…one of us would start and the other wouldn’t. And it would be for the good of the team. As hard and emotional and challenging as the situation was, it was worth it because it wasn’t about us, but about the team.

Work in new ways that may not be comfortable. I would guess that all coaches are in the business of challenging our players. We challenge them to try different skill techniques. We challenge them to be vocal leaders. We challenge them to think more critically about our sport. And all of that challenging isn’t comfortable for them…but they do it (or at least they should) for the good of the team. They understand that their coach wouldn’t ask them to do anything that wouldn’t also greatly benefit the team.

While it’s harder to receive individual accolades using the collaboration method, it’s crucial for our teams to embrace the challenge.

5 Ways We Can Show Our Teams How To Disagree With Us

Leadership, Team chemistryTeam chemistry

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I think I’m very reasonable and easy to approach. I pride myself on having an open-door policy where my athletes can come in and chat with me…whenever. I don’t think I’m intimidating or scary, so why do they go to my assistant coach when they have an outside of the box suggestion?

Because I’m the boss and they’re worried I’m going to bring the smackdown on them if they upset me. Now, is there any reason for them to think this? Nope, but they do anyway. In his post, 20 Ways To Disagree With Your Boss over at Leadership Freak, he talks about some rules of the road that could be helpful with our teams. Not only for disagreements, but for maintaining good harmony on the team.

5 ways our players can disagree with us without fearing for their lives

Ask what to do if you disagree before disagreements emerge. When I first started working here, the team I inherited had a player restricted from playing in the post season due to a substance abuse issue. In my first captains meeting, they asked me how we were going to handle those types of issues during the season. Being able to address it before it actually was a problem was a great way to set a baseline expectation.
Come with the facts. So say we’ve got an actual disagreement on our hands. Maybe we’ve got a playing time conundrum or even a team discipline disconnect, our players have to come to us with more than just “I feel”. You know how it goes: “I feel like Susie is a better player than Erica so she should play more” or “I feel like suspending Katie for a game isn’t fair”. Coming with facts will earn the coach’s respect so much more than basing everything on feelings.
Private is better than public. I’m sure we’ve all coached that player who thinks they know more than we do. Rather than reduce them to a puddle of tears by verbally assaulting them, remind the players that practice time is for the team and private issues should be handled privately. Though if they’ve got a skill question, others on the team might have it too and answering could prove to be helpful for everyone.
Ask if you can test your option to see how it works. I don’t know about you guys out there, but most times I do what I do because it’s what’s familiar to me. It’s not that I don’t understand there are different ways to do the very same thing. I’m sure if we let our teams know that we’re open to different ideas, they’d be more at ease with approaching us.
Drop it. This one is important for the team to grasp…after it’s over, it’s over. Speaking directly to the players out there: You approached your coach like an adult, with facts. You wisely scheduled a meeting with her so that you could speak with her in private. Great job! Whether she bought it and is willing to try your suggestion or she shot you down, you can’t be in the lockerroom bragging about how awesome you are or how awful the coach is (depending on their reaction)…you gotta let it go.

Hopefully these tips will help our players feel more comfortable talking to us about difficult topics.

Nurturing Young Leaders

LeadershipTeam chemistry

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I’ve been chatting with folks on my campus about creating a leadership class that doesn’t just involve athletes, but all students who hold leadership positions. While I think the non-sporty people in the room appreciate (sort of) that we can force strongly suggest to our players that they attend such a class, we also need to address the fact that most folks on campus don’t wield that kind of power with their students.

As we were having this discussion, I began thinking of how little attention I give to teaching my athletes how to be a person of influence…even if they’re a freshman or not one of the captains. Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is value in giving more influence to those who’ve been committed to the team for a longer period of time. But by focusing on training my upperclassmen leaders, am I short-changing the younger leaders who I’ll need to rely on for the future?

So how can we nurture our upcoming leaders? Beyond that, how can we make sure that our young players can respectfully offer leadership? And how can we make sure that our team leaders aren’t threatened by suggestions coming from someone who’s not a captain or recognized team leader?

Creating an open leadership culture

Don’t saddle young players with grunt work, it separates them from the rest of the team.
When we ask the team their opinions, don’t just ask the upperclassmen.
Do we really need team captains? Just wondering out loud…

In a great article called, How to Influence Without Authority, we learn eight ways we can teach our players to influence without that captain “C” on their jersey…I chose my top four to talk about here.

How players can lead without being a leader

Character. If younger players are seen as having the team’s (and not their own) best interest at heart, they’re more likely to be heard by the team leaders. They can show this by supporting, rather than undermining, the current leadership structure.
Connectedness. This one is a doozie. Sometimes our players separate themselves out by class and damage their chances of having power. Not only is being connected good for team chemistry, it’s also good for understanding where everyone is coming from. If an underclassmen does this well, they won’t be seen as trying to usurp power from the team’s leadership.
Social intelligence. The best way I can describe this is to not be awkward. I’m sure we’ve all had the young player who is trying so hard (too hard!) to fit in and it’s not being received well. It’d be pretty hard to have influence if their teammates feel uncomfortable around them.
Collaboration. Not only are these players connected off the court, but collaborate well on the court. These players aren’t worried about their own playing time, but how they can contribute to the greater goals of the team.

I’m sure all of us have been in the situation where we’ve got great leaders…it’s just that they’re not leaders yet. Perhaps creating this kind of environment can help them to spread their wings a little more comfortably.

Preparing Our Teams For Change

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The very essence of leadership is you have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully…You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.—The Myth of Change

We all believe that we know what’s best for our teams and feel that they should embrace whatever changes we have in store for them with enthusiasm. But…that doesn’t always happen. Think about some of the major changes that we could install: significant changes to how your team runs its offense, important changes to how team leaders are chosen, or even changes to your coaching staff. All of those things impact our teams. Let’s look at how we can make the transition go smoothly.

How we want our teams to react when presented with change:

“Gosh Coach, we knew you were knowledgeable and insightful about our sport, and this particular change is so well thought out that we cannot help but to be excited about this necessary change.”

How our teams will actually react:

Silence.
Some will resent the change and verbalize it.
Some will welcome the change and verbalize it.
Some will resent the change and keep quiet.
Some will welcome the change but not feel comfortable verbalizing it.

Getting ready for change

Ready ourselves. Anytime we want to make significant changes on our teams, we’ve got to make sure we’re prepared. How do we do that? We talk to other coaches whom we respect. We ask folks who’ve instituted the change that we’re looking into…pick their brains about the positives and negatives of the change. We can also ask them what they’d do differently when instituted the change. Leave no stone unturned.
Ready the team. Now, as the CEO’s of our teams, we can most certainly drop the news of change on our team in any kind of way that we choose. But, if we want it to go well, some key buy-in will be needed. Talk to some of the folks on the team and let them know what we’re thinking…and ask them what they’d think if we made that change. This way, when we make the major change, we have some people who can be positive behind the scenes.

Selling the team on why we think the change is necessary and why we think the team will be more successful because of the change has to be our goal when making significant changes. If we’ve done our jobs right, the change is something that everyone can look forward to instituting.

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Create More Time In Your Day By Better Managing Email

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When we don’t control our email habit, we are controlled by it.
—Coping With Email Overload

What’s the first thing you do in the morning? Do you reach over to grab your phone to see what messages you may have missed while your body so annoyingly required sleep?

Is it possible that the feeling of being overloaded by email is something that we’ve created ourselves? We’ve all got smartphones which give us up-to-the-second information…even if that second is at six in the morning or nine o’clock at night.

In the article I referenced above, Coping With Email Overload, the author talks about going on vacation and not having internet or phone access for a week. First of all, the world didn’t stop spinning on its axis. Secondly, he was much more focused on his email when he had hundreds of them to address rather than checking his email on his phone…only to actually respond to the same email later on when he got to his computer.

He was doing something that I think we all do…double-dipping. Read emails on the phone and then re-read them later when we actually have time to craft a well thought out response. What if we only did the work once? What if we set up a system for addressing emails that allowed us to feel like we had more control of our work lives?

An email management suggestion

Check it three times a day for a certain amount of time. The article suggests thirty minutes, but I think I’d need more at the beginning and end of the day. So I’m going to try (I’m a notorious phone-checking bandit!) an hour in the morning when I first open up my email, then a half an hour midday, and back to an hour before I shut the ole computer down for the day.

What does this mean?

I probably means that I don’t need to sit at my desk with my phone right next to me waiting for beeps and dings to tell me that I’ve received an email. It also probably means I’ll be more focused on the task at hand when I’m going through emails. There’ve been times when I’m diligently answering emails, only to be disturbed by my phone letting me know that I’ve received an email on another account. Not exactly the most high-functioning way to work!

Outliers

What if there’s an urgent email that requires my immediate attention? Maybe there are some of you out there who receive those sort of emails, but I’m not that important. In my mind, I may create a world where I get emails that need to be answered ASAP, but in reality, they can all wait a few hours.

It seems like vacations could be a time where we’d have to rely on our phones a bit more than necessary. That seems okay, right? For a week or two, we can break from the norm of managing our time well in order to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks.

What do you think? Is this feasible? Can we get more done by only checking email three times a day?

If you liked this post, check out Step Away From The Computer: Why Unplugging Will Keep You Sane and You Think You Can But You Can’t: On The Evils Of Multitasking.

Increasing Competitiveness Within Your Team

Coaching strategyTeam chemistry

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When I was a kid, I loved playing cards with my family. I come from a competitive family (dad and brother were both collegiate athletes), so our card games were ruthless.

I remember being in elementary school, playing Tunk or Spades or Crazy Eights for Now & Laters or Skittles…things of high value to a nine-year-old! We’d have our little kitty of candy in the middle and it was on.

The rules were the rules and I didn’t receive concessions because of my youth. If I put the wrong card down by accident, oh well. If I picked up a card I couldn’t use, oh well…candy’s gone. And if it took me a long time to realize that my brother could read my cards in the reflection of my glasses, that was my own fault.

Were there times I got upset? Yep. Was there the occasional shedding of tears? You bet. Did I learn how to compete with ice in my veins. Definitely! Am I saying that these games made me into a Division I athlete? Not necessarily, but learning to compete (with a little something on it) made me a courageous, risk-taker in many facets of my life…including athletics.

Clarity vs. Vagueness

In a great post called, To Learn Faster, Raise the Stakes, author Daniel Coyle talks about a violin teacher. This teacher challenged his students to perform a music piece perfectly five times. Some students got it…but only after about thirty or so tries while some never performed the piece perfectly.

Interestingly enough, when the teacher changed the instruction to performing if perfectly five times in a row or they’d go back to zero…the success rate soared.

The difference in the messages: the first says that we’ll stay at this as long as you need while the second puts a sense of urgency on the performance. Because of that urgency, the importance of each attempt was magnified.

Implementing this for your practice

Limit time. I know of coaches who put a time up on the scoreboard and give their team a task to complete with the promise of a punishment if not completed.
Count reps. You can do plus or minus scoring…or like the violin teacher, so many in a row with the score returning to zero for mistakes.
Make it a contest. When I was in college, we’d play doubles games with the winning team receiving an hour massage…talk about intense games!
Track progress from day to day and week to week. I’ve heard of coaches putting up poster boards in their locker room or gym and tracking whatever behavior it is they’re trying to reinforce. Their naturally competitive athletes would follow their progress religiously.
Post results. If you’ve said that your team needs to meet a certain marker in order to be successful, put it out there so that everyone can see it. Whether it’s a certain passing percentage or earning a certain number of trips to the free throw line…having the success (or failure) available for all to see will certainly amp up the intensity.

Clearly, there are times for practicing without putting competitive value on it…in the early stages of learning a skill, for example. But as soon as you can, put a little something on it in practice. How else are your athletes going to learn how to perform a skill when their heart is in their throat?

Using Academic Criteria To Measure Athletic Success

Coaching nerds, Team rolesCoaching career

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In the academic world, schools create tiers for its students. I would guess the bulk of students fall in the middle of the pack, taking regular classes and doing just fine. Then there are the outliers…those that are well above or well below “average”. Those that are in the well above category have the opportunity to enroll in Advanced Placement or Gifted and Talented classes and programs.

Clearly we do that in the athletic world as well. Middle schools have A and B teams, high schools have junior varsity and varsity. And the collegiate athletic system is amazingly stratified.

And I’d guess most of us even have these tiers on our teams. We’ve got non-starters and starters. And we’ve even got folks in the starter group who are more essential than others. So what if we, like our academic friends, had criteria for that tiering?

Check out this criteria for gifted and talented. There are many models mentioned in this article, so I just chose one of them. According to the definition, gifted and talented children are those who demonstrate achievement and/or potential ability in any of the following areas:

General intellectual ability. In athletics, I’d figure that means their general sports IQ. How well do they know the sport? Do they understand what’s required of them situationally? Are they able to take advantage of an opponent’s weakness while maximizing their own strengths?
Specific academic aptitude. I suppose this would be their knowledge of their particular position. What do they know beyond just the basics of the position? Are they students of the game? Do they understand their role offensively, defensively, and corporately?
Creative or productive thinking. I talked about having tiers on our teams. We’ve got players who just need to do what they’re told…as long as they don’t have to think outside of the box, they’re okay. But then we’ve got those players who see two or three steps ahead of the opponent…those are the creative players.
Leadership ability. Do teammates naturally follow this player? Are they supportive and challenging as the situation requires? Are they equally comfortable talking to teammates and coaches?
Psychomotor ability. This is defined as the capacity to manipulate and control objects. Things like controlling precision, multilimb coordination (sounds like sports to me!), reaction time, and response orientation. When you get right down to it, these are the qualities that influence skill. The more skilled the player, the more gifted and talented they are in respect to the team.

We may not have put names on the subjective nature of tiering our athletes, but I’m sure most of us do all of these things already. If you’re like me, you’ll feel validated that you’re doing the right thing by your team.

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