With only one regular season game remaining, we are sitting at .500 with less wins than the Golden Eagles have had since 2002. We could end on a winning record or a losing one depending on the final away game. In the big scheme of things, I suppose the outcome of the final game is just not that important. What is important is how we finish the game. Do we come together and play hard, giving our best effort, or do we simply throw in the towel believing next year will be better?
My intention is for the players to fight, to battle, and to discover another piece of themselves they did not know they possessed. What I mean by this is I hope for them to use this last game, this last challenge as a means to improve themselves, to push through one more self-imposed barrier. It is, after all, what collegiate basketball at the Division II level is really about--growth. At our level, it is not about the money, the big time television contracts, the gate receipts, or even the opportunity to play pro ball. It is about using the modem of sports as a means of education.
I have several young players who have not shown their talent this season. I keep waiting for them to recognize what they possess. There is Nichole Perry, a player who is in the gym every day shooting 500-600 shots. She has made her release quicker and developed a better jumper and increased her range. Kali Cuttaia is an athlete who is quick, has great hands, a shot blocker, who can really sky on a rebound. Kayla Dozier is exceptionally quick, a player who blasts by defenders leaving a trail of smoke in her wake. LeAnne Ross can shoot the deep three pointer, stop and pop the jumper or finish a lay-up with a double pump. All of these freshmen have shown bits and pieces of their brilliance at times, but none of them have allowed their talents to be on display consistently.
This has been our problem all year--consistency. Without a go-to player, we seem to falter when we need a basket as not a single player on the team knows who wants the ball as nobody consistently asks for it. Every team needs that player who wants the ball and is willing to take the tough shots and who believes in her heart she can make them. We have players who will show talent and desire on a single night, but not one player has determined she has the talent to affect the outcome of the game.
Oh, I believe we have some players next year who will step up, who will think of themselves differently after they become a sophomore or a junior, but that thinking does not help us finish this season well and they need to finish this season well in order to start the next one with more confidence.
Confidence is a frail thing. It seems to only come after a player has seen results but she needs confidence to make the results. Ironic, isn't it?
I hope my freshmen will realize their talents and allow them to flow through them in our last game.
PLAY HARD. PLAY TOGETHER.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Recovering From A Blowout
So how does a team recover from a thirty point blowout? How does a team think it can play again after a game where nothing seemed to go right? How do players find their way back to self confidence when it was eroded and erased by a team who simply wiped the floor with our efforts?
I think the questions have to be answered with character. If our players are built more of the character of years rather than the outcome of a game or games, they can recover. If all their self-esteem is based on a performance rather than years of learning and growing, then we cannot find our way back to playing hard, to competing, or to making opponents fight against us. It is not a question of what the coaching staff says or does; it now becomes a question of who each individual is.
I no longer base my self-worth on a game or the outcome of a game. When I was a player, I certainly did this and I hate to admit this, but as a young coach I was also guilty of this judgment. Now I know through years of self-reflection, reading and meditating that I am not better or worse because we won or lost a game. I have enough confidence and faith in who I am I no longer need to reassure myself through a contest I am good enough. I hope I can pass this onto my players--that they know they are still worthy and loved if they lose.
I hope they way they judge themselves is on effort, persistence, dedication, and willingness to learn from adversity. I hope they can see their growth throughout the season and know they have traveled a great distance. I want them to understand they are getting better; they are growing; they are expanding in ways and means they cannot yet understand and even more that this experience is not a bad experience. It is neither good or bad. It becomes whatever they want it to become--that they attach the emotion to the experience. In other words, they can feel great about how they handled the adversity or they can be angry about the number of losses in the season. They can find the good about the games we've lost or they can beat themselves up feeling totally unworthy.
It is not the judgment of others which hurt us the most; it is our internal judgment for nobody else can hurt us without our consent. This season may not been deemed a year for championships but maybe, just maybe, it was meant to be more. It was meant as an opportunity for expansion and for players to learn to love themselves no matter what the numbers on the scoreboard read.
PLAY HARD. PLAY TOGETHER.
I think the questions have to be answered with character. If our players are built more of the character of years rather than the outcome of a game or games, they can recover. If all their self-esteem is based on a performance rather than years of learning and growing, then we cannot find our way back to playing hard, to competing, or to making opponents fight against us. It is not a question of what the coaching staff says or does; it now becomes a question of who each individual is.
I no longer base my self-worth on a game or the outcome of a game. When I was a player, I certainly did this and I hate to admit this, but as a young coach I was also guilty of this judgment. Now I know through years of self-reflection, reading and meditating that I am not better or worse because we won or lost a game. I have enough confidence and faith in who I am I no longer need to reassure myself through a contest I am good enough. I hope I can pass this onto my players--that they know they are still worthy and loved if they lose.
I hope they way they judge themselves is on effort, persistence, dedication, and willingness to learn from adversity. I hope they can see their growth throughout the season and know they have traveled a great distance. I want them to understand they are getting better; they are growing; they are expanding in ways and means they cannot yet understand and even more that this experience is not a bad experience. It is neither good or bad. It becomes whatever they want it to become--that they attach the emotion to the experience. In other words, they can feel great about how they handled the adversity or they can be angry about the number of losses in the season. They can find the good about the games we've lost or they can beat themselves up feeling totally unworthy.
It is not the judgment of others which hurt us the most; it is our internal judgment for nobody else can hurt us without our consent. This season may not been deemed a year for championships but maybe, just maybe, it was meant to be more. It was meant as an opportunity for expansion and for players to learn to love themselves no matter what the numbers on the scoreboard read.
PLAY HARD. PLAY TOGETHER.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
When Your Attitude is Right, The Facts Don't Matter
I am not certain about how this team accomplishes some of the things it does. Sometimes we look so lost that we couldn't find the direction down a way one street and other times, when we have that spark, that look in our eyes which implies a don't-mess-with-me attitude, we can achieve remarkable things. After a two game losing streak where we fought with our hearts but not our heads, we came back to win two in a row. That, however, is not the remarkable thing I'm talking about.
What I am talking about is that we won those games with one and a half healthy post players. The one healthy post is freshman Kali Cuttaia and the half is 5'7'' guard turned post, Marilene LaPierre. Ericka Rousculp, the leading rebounder in the nation, was playing on an injured ankle and Shelby Stokes was out with another injury. In the game against Ohio Valley, we started with Tiffany Scott, but lost her to a head injury in the first two minutes of the game. So we played two games with one and half healthy posts. Now this is a daunting task for a good team to overcome, but for a young team, it should have been almost impossible.
I'm still not quite certain how we pulled it off, but this team has some never-say-die quality about them which makes them think they can do anything even if they have never done it before. In our last game, we set a school record for the highest second half shooting percentage in a game netting a blistering 74% from the field. This was after a rather disgusting first half where we looked as if the game was simply too fast for us and we couldn't find a way to put the ball in the basket even if it was a uncontested lay-up. How does a team who normally shoots below 40% pull that one off? And how does it pull it off when another starter goes down in the first half after plowing into the wall leaving a trail of blood in her wake? Oh, Nichole did come back and play in the second half. In fact, she played her best half of basketball in her young career scoring all 17 of her points in the last 20 minutes of play. (From this lesson, the coaching staff has deduced if she is not playing well, we should slam her head against the wall.)
Most teams would have quit in the circumstances above. They would have bought into the belief that all was going against them, but this team didn't. Nope. They just kept playing. Maybe it is their innocence, the freshmen naivete, which kept them from thinking the sky was falling, but maybe, just maybe, they have been listening to us tell them that when your attitude is right, the facts don't matter.
PLAY HARD. PLAY TOGETHER.
What I am talking about is that we won those games with one and a half healthy post players. The one healthy post is freshman Kali Cuttaia and the half is 5'7'' guard turned post, Marilene LaPierre. Ericka Rousculp, the leading rebounder in the nation, was playing on an injured ankle and Shelby Stokes was out with another injury. In the game against Ohio Valley, we started with Tiffany Scott, but lost her to a head injury in the first two minutes of the game. So we played two games with one and half healthy posts. Now this is a daunting task for a good team to overcome, but for a young team, it should have been almost impossible.
I'm still not quite certain how we pulled it off, but this team has some never-say-die quality about them which makes them think they can do anything even if they have never done it before. In our last game, we set a school record for the highest second half shooting percentage in a game netting a blistering 74% from the field. This was after a rather disgusting first half where we looked as if the game was simply too fast for us and we couldn't find a way to put the ball in the basket even if it was a uncontested lay-up. How does a team who normally shoots below 40% pull that one off? And how does it pull it off when another starter goes down in the first half after plowing into the wall leaving a trail of blood in her wake? Oh, Nichole did come back and play in the second half. In fact, she played her best half of basketball in her young career scoring all 17 of her points in the last 20 minutes of play. (From this lesson, the coaching staff has deduced if she is not playing well, we should slam her head against the wall.)
Most teams would have quit in the circumstances above. They would have bought into the belief that all was going against them, but this team didn't. Nope. They just kept playing. Maybe it is their innocence, the freshmen naivete, which kept them from thinking the sky was falling, but maybe, just maybe, they have been listening to us tell them that when your attitude is right, the facts don't matter.
PLAY HARD. PLAY TOGETHER.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Surviving A Challenging Year
Two days ago as I was talking with my assistant coach and discussing the basketball season and what had transpired up to this point, we both agreed our team had two serious issues in front of them: 1) feeling as if they were failures, and 2) not having any confidence in their abilities. We know as coaches it is tough for a young team without a senior to feel confident. The truth is one individual who is a go-to player, who has complete and utter confidence in her skills makes those around her better, because she takes the pressure off everybody else. But when you don't have that player and all the players on the team feel enormous pressure to perform when they don't yet feel they can assume that role, their confidence wanes with each miss of the basket, each turnover and every defensive misstep.
In the world of athletics, having a losing season is never seen in a positive light. People don't talk about effort or growth when talking about a game; they talk about the score. I can't imagine what Thomas Edison would have been like as an athlete. When working on his inventions, he always believed he had not failed but through his efforts he had figured out 10,000 ways something did not work. He always believed he was one step closer to success. Would he have under the microscope of fans and the media kept his positive attitude? Or would he have succumbed to the feeling of not being good enough?
So here we are in the battle of wills, of fighting the internal dialogue of our players trying to get them to see something good in the midst of a challenging season. On Monday, we had each of them write a definition of failure and then read the definition out loud. Most of their definitions included something like failure means unwillingness to grow or giving up or not giving your best effort. Then I asked them to write down as many physical skills and intangible lessons they had learned through the past six months. When they had completed their lists, I asked if anybody had less than ten things. Not one of them raised their hand. I then told them they were not failures if they grown and learned so much--that they must feel good about how much they had evolved in a six month time frame.
On Tuesday, we tried to tackle the lack of confidence issue we had been having. I bought sandwich baggies and placed each players name on a baggie and told the team these were To-Go-Confidence Baggies. We had each player and coach write down on a piece of paper something amazing they saw in each teammate. When we were done with this task, each player had 17 confidence builders in their baggie. These were baggies to take with them and to pull out a slip of paper whenever they needed a confidence boost.
I am not angry or upset about this season; I understand this season is an opportunity for me as an individual to grow and to become someone better. My hope is I can provide that lesson to my players as well.
PLAY HARD. PLAY TOGETHER.
In the world of athletics, having a losing season is never seen in a positive light. People don't talk about effort or growth when talking about a game; they talk about the score. I can't imagine what Thomas Edison would have been like as an athlete. When working on his inventions, he always believed he had not failed but through his efforts he had figured out 10,000 ways something did not work. He always believed he was one step closer to success. Would he have under the microscope of fans and the media kept his positive attitude? Or would he have succumbed to the feeling of not being good enough?
So here we are in the battle of wills, of fighting the internal dialogue of our players trying to get them to see something good in the midst of a challenging season. On Monday, we had each of them write a definition of failure and then read the definition out loud. Most of their definitions included something like failure means unwillingness to grow or giving up or not giving your best effort. Then I asked them to write down as many physical skills and intangible lessons they had learned through the past six months. When they had completed their lists, I asked if anybody had less than ten things. Not one of them raised their hand. I then told them they were not failures if they grown and learned so much--that they must feel good about how much they had evolved in a six month time frame.
On Tuesday, we tried to tackle the lack of confidence issue we had been having. I bought sandwich baggies and placed each players name on a baggie and told the team these were To-Go-Confidence Baggies. We had each player and coach write down on a piece of paper something amazing they saw in each teammate. When we were done with this task, each player had 17 confidence builders in their baggie. These were baggies to take with them and to pull out a slip of paper whenever they needed a confidence boost.
I am not angry or upset about this season; I understand this season is an opportunity for me as an individual to grow and to become someone better. My hope is I can provide that lesson to my players as well.
PLAY HARD. PLAY TOGETHER.
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