So you go on the road to compete in a tournament. You win your pool. The kids have great team building and the hotel and watching Avatar in theatre. You meet the team that won your home tournament in this final. You have a chance to win your first tournament of the year to send a message to your conference competition. You have the most rest going into the final. You have every reason to go out and compete hard. You have every reason to be hungry for a win.
Yet for some reason teenagers can still come out flat, lethargic and unwilling to defend competitively. You end up scoring 92 points in regulation but still can't win because no one defends all game long. Then the long ride home.
I hate that ride. You should be moving on (the teens you travel with clearly have) and all you want is silence to mope in. You've debriefed after the game. You've talked about positives and negatives for individuals, but still all I want is that ride to be over.
Grrr . . . I thought coaches were supposed be above petty competitive issues like this. Still need to grow up some I guess.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Season Reflection #6 - Big Baby's
So apparently I can still let my emotions get the best of me.
We played the other night and it didn't go well in the first half. You can't give up 51 points in a high school half of basketball and expect to compete. That being said we were only down a dozen at half so we went to talk about. I went in and began detailing defensive adjustments we had to make in order to close the gap and positive things we needed to keep doing in order to maintain success on offense.
But I was mad.
(We interrupt this blog to remind the reader that has happned on many occassions I don't see the world like most people. When most coaches would think that their kids weren't playing well, or didn't understand, or weren't sharp or even were dumb I don't. My default position on everything in the universe is that if we cared more it would work. It you cared enough to try harder, cared enough to train better, cared enough to sacrifice yourself for the win, etc.)
So I was mad and under the surface was the looming - Why don't you care monster - and then I saw them. Player with their shoe laces undone, players with their heads down, players clearly upset with their playing time rather then the score. I stopped (snapped - no stopped) and said:
"Forget everything I just said its all bullS#&^ ! You know the real reason we can't stop these guys. Its the same reason my 6 month old daughter can't play high school boys basketball. Baby's can't defend at this level!"
That was it. Everyone playing their guts out felt like they needed to do more and looked emploringly at their teammates. Unfortunately the nature of being a "big baby" is that when someone calls you on it you sulk and make it worse.
Did I feel better? Sort of! Did the kids who wanted to say something but didn't feel like the elephant in the room was brought up and they could relax? Probably. Did the issues causing the defensive short comings get resolved? Mostly no!
The moral of the story is a common one with me and teens: what I say is not what they are hearing. What they are hearing is definitely not what I mean. The really real truth is that in the at moment I want to run and around screaming "you see, you see" because all the stuff I bring up in practice and in meetings about needing to care more and work harder to be successful become manifest when its on the line. The simple fact is that at that point me gloating, finger pointing, or doing anything except being positive isn't going to help the outcome.
At this level of sports their are only so many in game adjustments kids can make. The competitor in me needs to take a back seat to the grown up coach who needs to find a way to manage the game. Could I have done something else? Would it have made a difference in the outcome?
I think what coach Greenburg says is true: You can't be the motivator, the disciplinarian, the counsellor, the teacher, the cheer leader and the support strucuture. If you are everything you burn out and they have nothing to do. The problem is cultural I'm still trying to make kids that aren't self motivators motivated instead of addressing the issue that they need to train them to be self motivated. I need to have less responsibilty and invesment in the outcome then they do.
How do I get them to do that?
We played the other night and it didn't go well in the first half. You can't give up 51 points in a high school half of basketball and expect to compete. That being said we were only down a dozen at half so we went to talk about. I went in and began detailing defensive adjustments we had to make in order to close the gap and positive things we needed to keep doing in order to maintain success on offense.
But I was mad.
(We interrupt this blog to remind the reader that has happned on many occassions I don't see the world like most people. When most coaches would think that their kids weren't playing well, or didn't understand, or weren't sharp or even were dumb I don't. My default position on everything in the universe is that if we cared more it would work. It you cared enough to try harder, cared enough to train better, cared enough to sacrifice yourself for the win, etc.)
So I was mad and under the surface was the looming - Why don't you care monster - and then I saw them. Player with their shoe laces undone, players with their heads down, players clearly upset with their playing time rather then the score. I stopped (snapped - no stopped) and said:
"Forget everything I just said its all bullS#&^ ! You know the real reason we can't stop these guys. Its the same reason my 6 month old daughter can't play high school boys basketball. Baby's can't defend at this level!"
That was it. Everyone playing their guts out felt like they needed to do more and looked emploringly at their teammates. Unfortunately the nature of being a "big baby" is that when someone calls you on it you sulk and make it worse.
Did I feel better? Sort of! Did the kids who wanted to say something but didn't feel like the elephant in the room was brought up and they could relax? Probably. Did the issues causing the defensive short comings get resolved? Mostly no!
The moral of the story is a common one with me and teens: what I say is not what they are hearing. What they are hearing is definitely not what I mean. The really real truth is that in the at moment I want to run and around screaming "you see, you see" because all the stuff I bring up in practice and in meetings about needing to care more and work harder to be successful become manifest when its on the line. The simple fact is that at that point me gloating, finger pointing, or doing anything except being positive isn't going to help the outcome.
At this level of sports their are only so many in game adjustments kids can make. The competitor in me needs to take a back seat to the grown up coach who needs to find a way to manage the game. Could I have done something else? Would it have made a difference in the outcome?
I think what coach Greenburg says is true: You can't be the motivator, the disciplinarian, the counsellor, the teacher, the cheer leader and the support strucuture. If you are everything you burn out and they have nothing to do. The problem is cultural I'm still trying to make kids that aren't self motivators motivated instead of addressing the issue that they need to train them to be self motivated. I need to have less responsibilty and invesment in the outcome then they do.
How do I get them to do that?
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