At a recent Pursuing Victory With Honor seminar in Los Angeles, speakers Larry Smith, a multi-jurisdictional mediator and arbitrator for the superior court system and in private practice, and Harold Slemmer, executive director, Arizona Interscholastic Association, spoke to teachers and coaches about the trust, duty, and responsibility placed on their shoulders.
Ten Lessons for Coaches
At a recent Pursuing Victory With Honor seminar in Los Angeles, speakers Larry Smith, a multi-jurisdictional mediator and arbitrator for the superior court system and in private practice, and Harold Slemmer, executive director, Arizona Interscholastic Association, spoke to teachers and coaches about the trust, duty, and responsibility placed on their shoulders.
Below are ten suggestions from their presentations:
1. If your groundskeeper is your MVP, you have a problem.
2. If you’re a calm, patient classroom teacher who becomes a werewolf when a whistle is put around your neck, you have a problem.
3. If you use biting sarcasm to motivate youngsters, you have a problem. Adults can unintentionally hurt a child this way, especially if it’s done in front of the team.
4. If you’re not treating the kids under your charge as if they were your children or your neighbors, you have a problem.
5. If you encourage your players to hate their opponents, you have a problem. If they were to move into your district, they would be on your team.
6. If your goal for your players is to educate them to ensure eligibility rather than to educate them, you have a problem.
7. If you make your players winners but they enter college or the pros uneducated, unprincipled, and entitled, you have a problem. When University of Chicago football coach Amos Alonzo Stagg was asked if a team was his greatest, he said, "I won’t know for another 20 years."
8. If you don’t have a mission statement, you have a problem. Everyone will have a different idea of what they are, when they’re falling short, and when they’ve accomplished them.
9. If you think your players would answer the question "Would you rather (a) sit on a winning team or (b) play on a losing team?" with (a), you have a problem.
10. If your philosophy is winning is everything, you have a problem. Playing is like eating a chocolate sundae. Winning is like getting the cherry on top. If you don’t get the cherry, did you not enjoy the sundae?
Principle Sixteen of the Arizona Sports Summit Accord states that "The profession of coaching is a profession of teaching. In addition to teaching the mental and physical dimensions of their sport, coaches, through words and example, must strive to build the character of their athletes."
