Teamwork: Putting it All Together

In order to have a winner, the team must have a feeling of unity; every player must put the team first-ahead of personal glory. -Paul “Bear” Bryant

I have learned a great deal from my conversations with people about the lessons they have taken from football. Many of the kids I heard from told me how much they had learned about playing their position and improving their football technique. The adults were more reflective on things, as you would expect, and I appreciate their insights on the lessons of discipline, determination, humility and respect as important parts of sportsmanship and success in football. The final theme that people discussed was teamwork.

Football is the ultimate of team sports. One football play has so many moving parts and its success is solely reliant on the trust of each guy doing their specific job. Most importantly, football is truly a game of discipline and adversity, and success depends on how both of these are handled. If these two components are taught and learned, not only does success come on a field but it provides a foundation to be successful in all facets of life. --Jed S. 

I was fortunate to attend a high school that constantly preached the team first mentality. My coach was able to get the players to realize that we were not good enough to beat teams with individual talent, and our only hope for success was to play as one unit. Early failures and late success helped our team realize that our coach was right.

Those early experiences helped me understand the greatest part of football is the sense of accomplishment as a team. There are so many people who contribute during a season. It is an awesome feeling when people can see how their contributions are only one facet of the complete workings of a team. When athletes understand that their teammates were working as hard if not harder than they were so that everyone would have the opportunity to reach the team goal, a major step in maturing as an athlete and a person occurs. It is an important lesson for kids to learn that they can achieve much more working together than they ever would working alone.

A critical aspect of working as a team is the ability to do whatever is asked to make the team better: 

To be selfless is the most important thing I've learned about football. It doesn't matter what level you are, or what your involvement is with the team, if you are selfless then you are making the team better. To me, being selfless means so many things. It means as a player you want to do everything you can to make the team better. It means that during the off season you train as hard as you can to be the best player you can be. It means that if you aren't a starter you cheer the team on with a good attitude as if you were in the game. People have to understand that we weren't all created with the same abilities so there could be someone more talented than you. And that's fine because I guarantee there is a place on the team where everyone will succeed. --Chad C.

A team’s success requires individuals that are truly willing to be selfless and sacrifice for the greater good. I have been a part of many great teams and with each of them, the first thing you recognize is that every great team plays as one. Every player and coach accepts his role and buys into the team goals and the team strategy for achieving those goals. Setting egos and individual goals aside is not easy, but the satisfaction that comes from the team effort and experience is well worth it.

Parents and coaches can help kids understand that every position on the field matters, and every kid on the field and on the sidelines contributes to the end result. Help them to see that it takes every single player fulfilling his role in order to find success. Great satisfaction comes not from individual performance, but in caring about their teammates enough to set individual needs aside and trust each other to achieve something bigger than they ever could alone.

Kids who understand the value of working together, sacrificing for the greater good, and winning or losing graciously as a team will have learned one of the most valuable lessons of sportsmanship...and some valuable life lessons as well.

Humility and Respect: Balancing the Talk with the Walk

Over the past few weeks, I have been reflecting on what lessons people have taken from their participation in football. Some of the stories have been funny and encouraging, but not all the lessons have been fun or easy to learn. Respect and humility are two themes that are extremely important to sportsmanship, but fall in the category of “tough to teach” and “tougher to learn.”

Respect for teammates, opponents, officials, and the game itself is a value of sportsmanship that needs to be modeled and practiced by everyone involved in a program. Humility is important to individual athletic development, and it is also the key to becoming a gracious winner or loser and a team’s dynamics.

It was a common theme from people on these two topics that some of the most valuable learning occurs in the moments many of us consider our worst:

This season I was reminded that our kids are hard enough on themselves when they make a “mistake” that they don’t need us as parents to remind them of it during or after the game. As parents, we need to remain positive during all aspects of the season. –Amy U. 

Let the coaches coach, players play, refs ref, fans cheer - all ends well. --Carey Z. 

Attitude has a huge impact on the performance of a player and the team as a whole. In practices and games, a team always plays its best when they stay positive. As parents and coaches, we are a huge influence on that positivity. In both success and failure, learning is always best acquired through encouragement. –Erika S.

Respect begins with a positive attitude and supportive atmosphere. Coaches, players, parents and officials all play a role, and they each need to do their best to fulfill those roles and honor the efforts of others. Respect is something that coaches and programs establish and build over time. I believe this is a step-by-step process and you can not overlook the little things that will help you earn respect. Simple but sincere acts like shaking hands with opponents after a game, cheering on teammates from the sidelines, and hearing positive comments from parents for opponents and officials help to teach respect to young athletes. Remind your kids that respect is not exclusive for the team that wins the most, it is given to those who work hard, show character in all situations, and follow through with their beliefs.

While respect is a tough concept to teach, humility is a tough one to learn. Every game has a winner and a loser, and every athlete will make mistakes at some point in time. Learning to handle those moments with grace and humility is a critical aspect of sportsmanship: 

First game of my last year of high school football, I carried the ball once. I fumbled and never got a chance to carry it again. It would be a few years later when it didn't bother me anymore.

The fumble taught me I'm not going to be good at everything, but the things I can do, I want to do well.   --Craig M 

One of the great challenges of sports is learning to set your ego aside and recognize what is the greater goal for the entire team. That is something I struggled with as an adolescent and find even to this day as a competitor is not an easy task. I was fortunate to have some strong mentors that helped me realize that winning was not always the most important thing and how I handled myself winning or losing as I walked off the field demonstrated more about my character than anything else.

My early years at the University of Sioux Falls were difficult to say the least as I bounced around in positions and sat the bench, but they might have been the most important years of my maturation as an athlete, coach and person. As our team struggled, I watched and learned from Coach Young what it meant to be humble and the importance of putting the team’s goals ahead of all things, even when this was trying to learn lessons from a difficult defeat.

Nobody likes to lose, but in the situations where mistakes occur or a team loses, we have an opportunity to demonstrate individual character. Those situations are only “failures” if we don't learn from them and improve. Coaches and parents are important role models in this area, so speaking favorably of opponents and officials is incredibly important. Helping kids keep emotions under control and support their teammates at all times is also extremely important to their individual development and the team’s atmosphere. We need to model respect in every aspect of the game and humility in winning and losing if we expect our kids to do the same.

The themes of discipline, determination, respect and humility form essential aspects of sportsmanship and success. The final theme that people discussed with me was ‘teamwork”…more to come.

Discipline and Determination: Tools to Success

The end of the youth football season is fast approaching, and that is a great time to reflect on the "teachable moments" that have come during the season.  Some of the lessons are about fundamentals and technique, but there are bigger lessons to be learned from our involvement...that's why we love the game.  So I asked a variety of people from all walks of life to tell me the most important lessons they learned from football.  There has been a wide range of answers, but two of the themes that have come up repeatedly involve discipline and determination. Those two qualities are important parts of success and sportsmanship. A program that develops and promotes those qualities will lead to an atmosphere which lets athletes know they worked hard, gave their best effort and can walk away knowing that they "left it all on the field."

 

Some of the comments focused on the importance of mental and physical discipline: 

It's a physical and mental game, be ready for both. –Jean Z. 

You have to be physically tough, but more importantly mentally tough to excel at football. –Keith P.

Others stressed the importance of training and practice to develop discipline: 

Train harder than your opponent. --Cory S. 

Practice until you reach a stage where actions follow automatically. --Kristy P.

It was good to hear recognition of all aspects of discipline and the importance of practice and training to success. Practice is what I love most about coaching. It gives me the opportunity to mold young men into a cohesive unit that will go onto the field with a common goal. Practice is critical to refine the many elements that will make a team successful. Individuals need to know the play, the coach’s expectations, the rules, the audibles, sight adjustments, and their assignments.  Then they have to put that all in motion as a team, and that takes extreme discipline. People think of games as the time to learn about football, but practice is where players develop the discipline to work together and learn the intangibles that translate into success on the field.

Discipline doesn’t come easy for individuals or teams, and other comments recognized the importance of determination to overcoming adversity: 

How people (players, coaches, and fans) react to negative situations. When things go bad, how do you handle yourself to overcome it? Losing control will only help you lose more games. --Shannon P.

Don't ever give up. You never know how much you can do if you give up. --Jadyn S. 

Being able to respond well to negative situations is a critical component of sportsmanship.  Football is extremely challenging, and it is easy to want to quit when things are difficult. But finishing a play, a quarter, a half, and a game after endless hours of practice, or when you didn’t believe you could do it, is one of the most fulfilling feelings an athlete can experience. And once an athlete sees the reward of his determination, he works harder, becomes more disciplined, and ultimately becomes a better athlete.

Discipline and determination were the first two "lessons" that people discussed, and the next two are respect and humility. Stay tuned...

Lessons in Sportsmanship

As the youth football season draws to a close, I am talking to lots of parents about their kids' experiences this season. It is great to hear of their improvements in technique and confidence, and even better when they tell me about things like discipline and teamwork...some of the foundations of sportsmanship.

My views on sportsmanship have greatly evolved over a lifetime of playing and coaching football.  I am highly competitive by nature, so as a kid, I turned everything into a competition, and winning was my main goal.  That included video games, shooting hoops...even spelling tests. Even as I got older, the athlete inside me was very focused on winning or losing, not the greater life lessons I would take from those experiences.  When I was able to become a parent and a fan of this great game, I started seeing and valuing the lessons of sportsmanship in a different way. 

Children have vastly different abilities and mature athletically at different rates.  Keeping them confident and involved is so important as they learn about the game.  Stepping onto the field is a great opportunity, but it needs to be an opportunity to learn about more than just winning or losing.  Kids who are able to walk off the field appreciating the value of competing, working together, sacrificing for the greater good of the team, and winning or losing graciously have learned some valuable life lessons.  I didn’t grasp the importance of those lessons until much later.  As I work more with young athletes, I think it is critical to reinforce the lessons of sportsmanship from the very beginning.

I asked a number of people from all walks of life to tell me about the most valuable lessons they have learned from their involvement in football.  I will be sharing their answers over the next couple of weeks along with my thoughts about how parents and coaches can help instill the values of sportsmanship in young athletes.   I hope you appreciate their answers as much as I did, and I hope you will add your voice to the conversation.

Time Out: Roundtable with the Coaches

If you want to be a successful coach, you have to listen and learn from other successful coaches.  I am fortunate to have some good friends who are great coaches, so I asked two of them to answer a few questions and share their insights on coaching football, motivating athletes, and developing kids in the sport.  Kim Nelson (SF Roosevelt) and Brian Hermanson (SF Washington) together hold the Class 11AA State Football Titles for the past three years in SD, so they definitely fall in the "successful coach" category.  These are their responses to my questions:

KR:  How many years have you coached? Where did you play college football?

Kim Nelson-SF Roosevelt

Nelson:  I have been a head coach for 34 years (Milbank, Rapid City Central, Sioux Falls Washington, Edina, MN, and now RHS.)  I played college football, basketball and baseball at Dakota State in Madison.

Brian Hermanson-SF Washington

Hermanson:  I have been coaching football for 32 years. I have coached at the junior high, high school, college and indoor football level.  I played football at SDSU from 1977-1981.

KR:  What do you enjoy about coaching? Is there anything you don't enjoy?

Nelson:  I really enjoy the off season and the challenge of putting a new team together. It never gets old. Every season brings new players, opponents, coaches, and every team is so different. I love that.
I don't enjoy parents and players who have unrealistic expectations about their ability and playing time. Every player must EARN his playing time--they are not just entitled to play because they are older or think they want to play more than another guy. The best players play. That is the hardest part of my job.

Hermanson:  I enjoy the competitiveness and helping athletes develop to their full potential. There is nothing that I don't enjoy about coaching.

KR: What is your greatest success as a coach?

Nelson:  Having former players come back and tell me how much they enjoyed playing football and hearing them talk about the great memories they have about that time in their life.

Hermanson:  There have been lots of great moments, but being able to have my son be part of two state titles was a thrill.

KR:  Part of your job is to motivate and inspire your players. What motivates and inspires you?

Nelson:  When someone says we can't beat a certain team, or we aren't good enough. I respond to a challenge by working harder and coaching our team harder. The toughest games are the ones that everyone says you are supposed to win.

Hermanson:  Hard work and dedication. I am a person who pays attention to detail. Being part of a football team or program is much like being part of a family. Everyone must accept their role!

KR:  What advice would you give to a 6th grader who wants to play high school football for you someday?

Nelson:  Work hard on ball skills and footwork. Be a fan and a student of the game. Listen to analysts talk about the game and try to understand the little things that can make a difference when you play. Respect the game and your opponents. Don't get too high when you win, or too low when you lose. Make no excuses--work so hard that you refuse to have any. Make your teammates better by being positive, and support everyone on your team.  Players can change a lot from 6th grade to high school, so don't be discouraged if you aren't very big or very fast yet. Keep at it! Be supportive when you are not in the game and support the guys on the sidelines when you are playing. Team - Pride - Trust

Hermanson:  First and foremost you need to have FUN!!!! Learn to play lots of positions, and don't be discouraged if you make mistakes. Learn from them!

KR:  What recommendations would you give a coach in Junior Football?

Nelson:  Each player on your team is equally important and you must coach ALL of them. They are going to remember almost everything you tell them, so make sure it is a positive comment and a positive memory. Winning doesn't matter in Junior Football, learning to love the game and become a good teammate is most important. Success at that level should be measured by how many players want to keep playing next season. Coach for the right reason. Someday, coach a team that doesn't have your child on it. Always try to be fair and teach every player something to make them better every day.

Hermanson:  Be organized, and make sure that you create an environment that is positive. Keep in mind the age of the athlete you are coaching, and be sure you coach all the kids, not just the stars.