Upset About Something?
(Maybe You Ain’t Taught It Well Enough)

One of the most important concepts for a coach to understand is The Responsibility Principle.

If things aren’t going well, you have just one person to blame: yourself.

Somehow you just haven’t communicated well enough (yet) or explained clearly enough (yet) or taught convincingly enough (yet) what it is you want.

I am thinking of coaches who are irritated periodically by players coming late to practice or tossing towels on the locker room floor, or making too much noise on the team bus.

If something is important to you, spell…it…out.

Write it down, and make sure your captain and your team understands fully that this thing is a requirement of yours.

Sometimes when I am running a program, I may begin to get irritated at a player for dribbling on the side of the court during a scrimmage. Many coaches may not be bothered by that, so the kid has no reason to suspect that this is annoying me.

I start to get angry at the kid and then suddenly have to remind myself that the problem is mine, not theirs. During this program, I forgot to explain carefully and fully why I hate dribbling on the side of the court during a scrimmage.

Some coaches are apt to say, “If I had to stop to explain every little thing like that, I wouldn’t have time to put in out-of-bounds plays, defenses, or offenses. Every day there is something new.”

I don’t buy it.

Every day there is something new because you didn’t take time to explain what you want.

You think you are taking a shortcut by leaving out all the little things, and you find out the hard way that there aren’t any shortcuts.

You must attend to the things that matter to you, first and fully, and then get to the rest of the game as soon as you can.

If your early meetings with players and parents are slow and plodding, so be it.

Do what needs to be done.

Don’t go through a whole season being irritated by things you failed to explain.

Stop what you’re doing and explain.

Attach consequences to failures and go on.

There are no shortcuts.

Every failure to please you is your own personal coaching failure.

If you set things up properly, things are much more likely to go well for you.

Good coaches enjoy coaching more than bad coaches, and it’s not simply because they win more.

It’s because they have learned to deal fully–and get compliance–with the things they require.

 
 
Adapted from the book Runnin’ the Show by PGC Founder, Dick DeVenzio.