Mid-season is quickly approaching and
things may not be going as you had hoped. There are a number of
reasons that this could be happening. You may have had a number of
injuries, your team may just be under performing, or you might not be
very talented. Injuries have a way of working themselves out and
there are numerous articles on fixing an under achieving team. I
want to focus on teams that simply are not good because the players
are not skilled and athletic.
I have coached every level of sports
from youth league to college athletics. I have also won just about
every championship available to a coach including league titles,
sectional championships, regional championships and more. I have
also coached a handful of teams that I quickly discovered were going
to struggle during games. It was never for a lack of effort or
preparation, it was simply because they were not very good and there
was not enough time during our season for them to develop the skills
needed to be a good team.
There are four things that you can do
to make your season a better experience for everyone and keep your
team playing hard.
1. Be honest with your team. Kids are
smart. They know if they are not very good and you will have a lot
more credibility with them if you say it out loud. Tell your team,
“WE are not very good.” Use the word “we” so that they know
that you are in this with them. Explain to them what you are going
to do to help them get better and more importantly what you are
going to do to help them be more competitive in games.
2. Defense, Defense, Defense. The
greatest equalizer in any game is defense. It is also the best
friend of a team that is limited in skill. Defense is essentially
the same in all sports and relies on one major factor: effort. If
you have athletes that are good lacrosse players, but bad basketball
players they can still play defense. As the coach you need to pound
this into their minds. Make them understand that it is never
alright to give up points. Teach them to remember and hate every
time a point is scored on them. You will be amazed at the impact
this attitude has on the final score.
3. Quarters. If you coach a sport that
plays an opponent only once per season, you can focus on quarters,
periods, innings, or whatever the measurement is for your sport.
Set a team goal for the game to win one quarter or three innings.
Set a goal that is attainable for the team.
4. What is a win? A couple of years ago
I was coaching a middle school girls basketball team that struggled.
We had managed one win, competitive in a couple others, and were
destroyed a number of times. Our final four games were against
teams that had already beat us by an average of 24 points. That is a
lot in middle school basketball. I walked into practice the day
before the first of the four games with a whiteboard. It listed all
four opponents and the margin of victory of the first game.
I told the team that we probably
weren't going to win any of the games and that was ok. The important
thing was to show that we had improved more than any of these teams.
On the whiteboard was a third column labeled Win/Loss. I told the
team that if we lost by a closer margin of victory that we were
calling it a win. At first they thought it was silly, but what it
did was make them play their butts off in the fourth quarter. They
became a team that was diving for loose balls, while being down by 15
points late in the final quarter. They embraced the idea so much
that in our final game they were down by 11 going into the fourth.
That was the margin of the first game. To start the quarter, I told
them win the quarter and win the game. They played so hard that the
other coach had to call a timeout because we cut the lead to three
with two minutes left. We didn't win the game, but we definitely won
the battle and this group of kids improved more than you can even
imagine.
The reality is that very few teams
truly compete for their league title and if you coach kids that are
JV or younger, it doesn't even matter. The focus should always be on
getting better and being the best athlete and team that you can be.
If you truly believe this than you can have a team that goes 3-10 and
honestly call them a great team.
