On Winning

Received an email from a coach asking me to evaluate his kids.

Interesting.

He was from a small school, less than a hundred kids a class. I love small schools and said so recently to an administrator who immediately shot back, “Why.” Having 75 kids in a class is a school that most would say is small, certainly smaller than more in one class than that whole school. Small is a relative term. My answer to him was, “School’s your size are large enough to offer programs but small enough where everyone knows everybody.”

When you are in a small school, there are only so many kids that come out for the team. My evaluation of his kids was not going to change his performance, especially form afar. The starters on his team are not going to change, not much depth on a squad of 30 kids.

So I started to think what would be the best advice I could give and came up with these thoughts:

Do Be An 11 things with your kids everyday. That works on their attitude, and their attitudes are the single most important thing they will take into the game. “Won’t be beat – Can’t be beat!”

The second best thing your can do with them, you are doing: working with them on a daily basis in the weightroom. BFS works. Not only do they realize athletic potentials sooner, they build self esteem daily and bond together. The most important thing you have to give kids today is T I M E. You will spend more “awake time” with them than any other significant adult in their life. You are their #1 positive role model. If you skimp on the time you share with them, you will get skimpy results. You have to be in the weightroom with them everyday, year round. You cannot tell them to go to the weightroom; you have to be their waiting for them. It is a duty you cannot hand off to another.

Work your butt off to raise money to significantly upgrade your weigthroom which will accommodate more kids and accelerate their development – raise it with the administration, boosters, superboosters, parents: it’s their kids that will benefit. And don’t give me reasons why it can’t be done. It can. No matter what the economy is, no matter that it’s a “Blue Collar town,” or any other excuse for not figuring out a way to get it done. All those people have cell phones and probably more than one car. The money is there, if the program you are building is worthy.

And put the kids into a position where they can be successful out their on the field. As the spread offense becomes more popular in universities across the land, there are more and more schools trying to execute it in high school. The spread is seductive for coaches, players, and communities. The big difference, college coaches can comb the nation locating Tim Tebow, recruit him and teach him what to do. High school coaches do not get to recruit players to fit their system, they have to develop a system that suits the kids he has that year. Woody was right when he said there were three things that can happen when the ball is in the air and two of them are bad. It’s a lot easier to hand the ball off to a FB that can bench 350, squat 450, and power clean 300 pounds and run behind a line that can do the same or more. BFS allows you to do that. We can show you how. Do it all the time. But you are not going to do it tomorrow; I T T A K E S T I M E. And the time you invest with them will be paid off with large dividends, now and in the future as they contribute to society because you taught them the value of work ethics coupled with teamwork in achieving a goal.

That’s our job – to build quality programs that allow kids to showcase their talents. Everyone wants to be somebody special. Some sing in the choir, play in the band, go to DECCA or FBLA nationals, math bowl, whatever. We get to work with the athletes. If we have built a quality program, the kids will choose it. If not, there are many other things kids can choose these days. And they will do it faster than ever because there are more distractions and demands on their T I M E than ever.

That’s was my advice to him. To me, those would be some of the best practices he could employ with his kids. Oh, and I would probably evaluate his coaching much more than his kids.