Many of us are starting the Spring Season and this is just a quick reminder of different things that we coaches need to address.

1. Clearance to coach- make sure you have registered and have completed your background checks
2. Found a team mom/dad/manager to help organize snacks and other events for the team
3. Have 2-3 assistants lined up?
4. Take your assistants out for a “coaches meeting?” Make sure everyone is on the same page
5. Submitted your roster to the league?
6. Registered for end of season tournaments?
7. Made hotel arrangements for out of town tournaments- team mom
8. Create list of new coaching tactics, ideas that you want to tryout this season- Need Ideas?
9. Double checked your equipment bag?
10. Uniforms?
11. Pre-season parents meeting- see other blog article
12. Develop a coaching philosophy and stick with it? See previous Blog Post
13. Developed practice plans in preparation for first contest?
14. Developed contingency plans when practice is canceled?
15. Created/developed a TEAM WEBSITE that can help foster communication?
16. Make sure you have insurance!!! See link to K&K
17. Distribute the Practice and Game Calendar

Kudda HIGHLY recommends that coaches hold a Pre-season meeting with the parents. This is a valuable opportunity to connect with the parents and help them understand what to expect from you. Take the initiative and be PRO-ACTIVE.

Avoid these Common Mistakes coaches make in this meeting:

• On the field right after practice or game. Parents are not listening to you as they are more focused on getting out of there and on their way home.
• Don’t prepare for the meeting. Coaches attempt to wing it and talk at their parents for 20 minutes. Parents lose focus after 2-3 minutes and your message is not received. You also run the risk as appearing unorganized and this will cause the parents to wonder about how you organize practices and games.
• It‘s all about the Rules. “Don’t do this and Can’t do that.” Takes on a negative tone.
• Coach TALKS for the entire time. Again, very ineffective.

Here are some ideas of topics to cover and how to efficiently reach out to the parents

1) Have VISUAL PowerPoint… lots of pictures and Images rather than text. Use this as a guide and for the parents to see while they listen.

2) Have other handouts such as

• Expectations
• Philosophy
• Schedule both practices and games
• Contact info

3) It should be a requirement for all parents to attend and it should be held in a setting where there are little distractions. We suggest a separate room or a place where people can sit down. When people stand, they lose focus quickly.

4) Philosophy- here’s your chance to tell the parents what you’re all about as a coach. What do you value and what is important to you? Is it about winning the championship or to improve everyday?

5) Expectations- Kudda recommends that you give a handout of your expectations to the parents. Some coaches have both the parent and player sign this sheet. During the meeting, refer to it, mention 2-3 of the main ones and then move on. DON’T spend the entire meeting going over every expectation

6) Have the captains talk- give your captains the opportunity to exercise some leadership. Have them talk about why they love the sport and what they hope to accomplish this season.

7) Have team mom talk- Allow your parent liaison a few minutes to share their plans for the season. This allows them the time to get snacks and refreshment signups going as well as sharing any news about team events.

Review schedule- Give them a handout. Point out Key Dates only

9) Example of practice see examples

It should NOT be a RULES meeting. Be upbeat, let them get a sense of you as a coach/ person

Yes, there are 50 inches of snow on the ground and sub-artic temperatures. That means one thing… that Spring sports are set to begin in the next few days. Now the first few days/weeks are all spent indoor and as a coach, you’re happy if no one gets hurt. When you have 20 kids in a confined area with objects flying all over, the chances for a bloody nose go up astronomically. Eventually we do make it outdoors and begin to play games in the warm sunshine of 50 degree days. Try to keep that in mind as we shovel out the driveways.

With the beginnings of a new season, coaches are presented with the opportunity to positively influence another group of players.  As mentioned in previous posts, I’d highly recommend that coaches get the books by Jeff Janssen on coaching leadership. While you come to Kudda to help you become a more Competent coach, and you read Janssen books to help you develop leaders, there is still one major area that can make or break your season that you do have some influence on and that is Team Chemistry. There has been a lot of debate on Team Chemistry; can it be made or is it dependent on an act of nature? We all know that teams that have that tight chemistry, overachieve and tend to be much more successful than teams that are much more talented. So what can coaches do to help promote Team Chemistry?

Note that are various types of Team Chemistry. In the military, it’s called, “Pain-Retain”. Think back to all of the classic war movies where a group of soldiers go through basic training with the Drill Instructor. (I’m thinking Full Metal Jacket!!) At the end, that group becomes a cohesive unit. (minus Private Pyle) Well, that style probably no longer works in coaching as it may have 30-40 years ago. The successful coaches today are all about “relationship coaching”, creating a family type atmosphere. Here are some of the techniques and strategies that those coaches utilize to help promote and foster team unity and chemistry.

It all  starts with the coach clearly communicating their philosophy to the team. As discussed in an earlier post, the philosophy has to be something that the team can control while focused on the journey. Coaches also do a great job of letting their players know that they care about them. It could be the result of lots of sidebar conversations or scheduled weekly meetings. Coach John Wooden hand wrote notes and letters to each of his players.

Coaches are also all about keeping traditions. These traditions help to foster chemistry as players share some common experiences. For the UNC basketball teams under Dean Smith, traditions emerged that are now part of most programs. Simply standing for players as they come off the court or huddling up before free throws help build this sense of tradition.

My thoughts are that while the team chemistry really has to come from within the team, the coach can certainly create the structure and platform to promote this. It takes a conscientious effort on the coach, but when you realize the return on this additional investment in your team, it’s well worth taking time to help foster.

As many of you are starting a new season with a new group of players, please take a step back and think about what you want to accomplish with your team? Is it about winning the championship? Is it about helping them improve as players? Is it about increasing their enjoyment of playing sports? Take a moment and reflect on why you are out there and what you hope to provide for your players.
Having a solid coaching philosophy will really help your players, and their ever-encroaching parents, understand what to expect from you, the coach. When you develop your philosophy, here are a couple of pointers to help you along.

• First, focus on what you can control. You can control the work ethic and pace of practice. You can control how hard your players play. You can control how prepared they are to play. You CAN’t control bad calls, bad weather and bad luck. You CAN’t control if you win a game. Yet, too many coaches have a philosophy that is focused on winning the championship. What happens if you lose the championship due to windy conditions and some unlucky calls? Is your season a failure?
• Focus on what you can control and develop part of your philosophy around it. Part of Coach Dean Smith’s Philosophy was “Play Hard”. Something that they could control.
• Focus on the journey, not the outcome. Coaches get so focused on winning and being in first place that they miss the opportunity to have a positive impact on their players. They miss the opportunity to develop some close personal relationships with their players. Isn’t that why we’re out there? We love being around kids. When a coach focuses on the journey, their teams play a lot more unselfishly and with more unity and chemistry. Another part of Dean Smith’s philosophy was “Play Together”. Of course this had far reaching implications off the court. Players couldn’t be late to practice, games or classes as this would hurt the team. They couldn’t make bad decisions that might costs the team. By focusing on the journey, think about how your actions and body language might change during tight games? Will you still get visibly upset when a player misses a shot or makes an error? You may if you’re worried about the outcome. Hopefully you won’t if you think about how you can do a better job of handling your players during games.

I’m aware that there are many other concepts and qualities that you may want to share and emphasis with your players. Good citizenship, good sportsmanship, respect and many others are great qualities to include/be part of your philosophy. Try to not include everything as then this sounds artificial. Think about the 2-3 most important qualities. Build your philosophy around these. Chances are some of the others are underlying layers and cousins of the 2-3 that you pick. The key is to focus on what you control and focus on the journey.

Dean Smith’s book, “The Carolina Way” is not a typical “How to coach” book. Rather the book is divided into three parts for each topic.

1. First is Smith explaining a key concept or theme that made his team successful.
2. His former players then add their views as to why that concept or theme was so important to them as players and as people.
3. The last part of each chapter has a business guru explain how to apply that concept to the business setting.

My sense is that the last section, business, was the part that made this book so different and valuable. Many other coaching books make reference to a business setting with a few quick sentences. “The Carolina Way” focuses specific sections to concrete examples of how to apply these themes.

The setup of the book also allows for pleasant change of pacing while you read. Too many coaching books just keep coming at you and telling you more and more strategies until you get overwhelmed. Or they keep repeating the same concept and stories over and over. Smith’s book has a few pages of Smith explaining the theme, several pages of his players discussing that theme and then several pages of the business application of that theme. It’s very enjoyable.

Many of the coaches emphasis Unselfish play. That seems to be a common theme in most successful programs. Here Smith gives lots of concrete examples of how to coach an unselfish team.

A few themes jumped out at me. There’s a chapter on Routines and how routines help build team chemistry. Smith shares several examples of Carolina routines that are part of their tradition and how the players value those routines. One of them is that Carolina players always point to the passer after they score. This helps to reinforce the unselfish style of play. It’s a Carolina tradition to have all bench players stand and cheer for players coming off the court. Another routine that Carolina players had was the “Tired” signal. Coach Smith understood that playing his fast paced, (except for that Four Corners thing) high pressured defensive style of basketball was exhausting and he didn’t want tired players out there hurting his team. He devised a signal for tired players to come out and then be able to go back in when they were ready. This gave the players the right to re-enter when they were ready, rather than waiting for the coach to decide. The last area was on senior leadership. I liked that the seniors reinforced the standards of the team that Smith put into place. I did have mixed feelings about the treatment of the Freshmen which I’m sure is the case in most teams. Seems like there may have been too much senior privilege; first in line to get water, on the bus, on the plane etc. Why do teams dump everything on the freshmen, making them do all of the grunt work? It’s the senior’s team!! Take charge and set the example!

Another theme that I appreciated as a coach hearing from one of the greats is the respect Smith showed every person connected with the team. He treated starters, bench and role players and managers with the same amount of dignity and respect. Too often, coaches focus on the just the starters or the high profiled players. With Smith, that wasn’t the case.

The last them was how during the recruiting of players, Smith never promised playing time. Many other coaches would guarantee and promise the world to recruits. Smith would only promise them that they would be on the team if they worked hard and kept their grades up. My sense is that Smith truly cared about the individual rather than just the basketball player.

I just finished reading Tony Dungy’s “Quiet Strength”. It’s a summary of his playing and coaching experience and how his spiritual side has helped guide him. I’m not one to quote scriptures nor do I read the Bible. And I don’t like having that forced down my throat either. Some may find Quiet Strength as having too much Bible connecting to coaching. I found it a pleasant change, a different perspective to coaching. Many of the scriptures and quotes were very relevant to coaching and working with others. The one that I felt was important was how Dungy was explaining to his players that it was the journey to the championship, not just about winning the championship. I believe the Bible quote was something along the lines of, “if you conquer the world, what about your soul… I’ll have to double check the exact wording.
It was a different approach to coaching. It was about here is how to run a team. Great balance between coaching and spiritual side.

Completing the Total Athlete

For the past three months I have been a book hound for anything that deals with coaching leadership. I’ve read a ton of books written by current and former coaches on how to be a better leader. I’ve also read Dorfman’s Coaching the Mental Game which really helped to spell out the leadership qualities that we should be striving towards. However the most comprehensive and easy to understand book I’ve come across is by Jeff Janssen entitled The Seven Secrets of Successful Coaches. How do you become a coach where your players overachieve because of your leadership qualities? How can you work on and improve those qualities? Janssen answers these questions while providing lots of examples from successful coaches in college and the pros. The leadership and mental approach to sports is going to be the next big revolution in sports.

It seems that athletes are becoming more and more skilled as they are playing their sports younger and younger. They hire personal trainers to help them achieve more speed and strength. What we see today are athletes that are bigger, stronger, faster and more skilled than athletes of 5-10 years ago. My sense is that the next phase of athletic development won’t be based on what happens inside the gym or athletic field but rather on what happens inside a player’s psyche. My sense is that players who can better control their emotions and learn how to lead their teams will be the new “superstar” athletes in the next few years.

Janssen also wrote a book focused on how players can become stronger leaders. The Team Captains Leadership Manual is a must read for all high school, club and college players. Not just the captains; all players.
Kudda highly recommends these two books by Janssen.

One of the worst experiences as a sports parent was the year my son, Kyle, wrestled when he was in the 1st grade. We’d go to these all day tourneys. Get there at 6:30 am for weighins… first match starts at 8:45. Over 15 seconds later as Kyle gets pinned by a kid 7 years older but who weighs the same as a 1st grader. Next match is at 11:00. That too, is over 30 seconds later as Kyle gets pinned again. Next match 2:30. This time Kyle pins his guy in 20 seconds. Last match starts at 5:30 and once again Kyle gets pinned in under 15 seconds.
Hours spent at a wrestling match…12.
Total time watching your son wrestle… 90 seconds.
Watching him get turned into a pretzel… priceless.
Well not quite a Mastercard moment.

Of all of the sports to watch your kid play, wrestling was the most difficult to watch. There is this incredible anxiety of who is he going to wrestle? “Oh please let it be a girly boy!” Please let him wrestle the kid who flops on the ground and giggles every time someone touches him. (That was me during my brief but notable wrestling career) Unfortunately most times it was the tall lanky farmboy w/ the crew cut who proceeds to
introduce Kyle’s right ear to the back of his left ankle. It took every ounce of restraint for me to stop from running onto the mat and smacking that kid around. As I’m watching this I’m thinking to myself, ”What if he is in the army and has to be able to do hand-to-hand combat, he’s going to die!” Needless to say that wrestling was a one year experiment in humility.

My hats off to all of you wrestling parents out there. Not only are you dedicated and willing to spend entire weekends at meets, but you control the anxiety that you must fell before every match. That’s a lot of control!!!

If you go to any bookstore’s Sports section, chances are that you will see a disproportionate number of coaching books written by basketball coaches. Seriously, check it out next time you’re in Barnes and Noble. So that got me thinking, “Why is that?” Do basketball coaches have a secret formula on great coaching? What is it about basketball coaches that make them so good at teaching other coaches how to coach?

Several factors make coaching basketball the “Latin” of coaching, My sense is that if you can coach basketball, you should be able to easily pick up and coach other team sports even if you have never played that sport. Why?

• The classroom setting: The basketball court is a fairly enclosed space that is relatively small. One coach can easily be heard within those confines. Resembles a classroom. You’re not spread out on a football field. There is 1-2 coaches per 12 players allowing for maximum communication.
• The fundamentals of basketball transfer over to other field sports where the goal is to score points/goals. Fundamentals such as the athletic position are common in many sports. The concepts of cutting, screening and switching/reversing the attack are also common. Looking for the 3v2 and 2v1’s are similar. The fundamentals of playing man to man defense, seeing man and ball, and shading towards ball side are all common with lacrosse and soccer.
• All of the players need to learn the same basic concepts, cutting, screening, shooting, and defense. Compare this to football where you have the linemen, running backs, QB’s…all learning and focusing on different fundamentals. Baseketball is pretty much the same. Of course the post players may practice their post moves while the guards practice their dribbling. However, many coaches are not labeling players as guards and forwards. There are many offenses and defenses where the players are interchangeable.

So for all of you basketball coaches out there just starting your season, realize what your teaching these players will carry over to other sports. How you teach them will help you coach those other sports as well.

Maybe you have noticed that the video quality of Kudda has improved. Starting with the videos from 2 months ago, Kudda has invested in upgrading the quality of all of the new videos. When Kudda first launched 3 years ago, we were concerned about the file size and streaming costs. Understand that this was right at the beginning of the video revolution on the web. Most conventional video players were smaller as we took our lead from Youtube.
What has happened since then is the abundance of band width and the decrease of streaming costs. More and more sites have larger video players, higher quality and clearer videos. We went with a larger video player last September but our videos started to look a bit grainy in this larger player.
Kudda spent a great deal of time and resources trying to increase our video quality without increasing the file size. Our first batch of these new videos was Dan Kallaugher on Faceoffs in boys’ lacrosse. We have since added a huge addition to our wrestling section and lots of new videos for girls’ lacrosse.
The video quality was just aesthetic improvement as we have always felt that the quality of our coaches is the best on the web!
We hope that our viewers appreciate the improved quality of the videos.