A Coach speaks...

"If my team loses,

I look at it saying,

I didn't do a good

enough job teaching

them OR...

they didn't do a good

enough job learning."

Coaching and Winning:

Winning And The Art Of Coaching  

(by Patrick Suessmuth)

Winning is fun.

Losing is not.

Sport is about winning and losing IF a score is kept.  If a game is for pure fun, play it in fun.  Keep no score, let the game be fun for the game’s sake.

I’ve struggled long and hard with the concept of winning.  I rebelled against winning for winnings sake.  To coach for that meant for me a shift in emphasis off the people I’m coaching and on to a stress of an all out effort to win.

I believe all-out-win is appropriate in professional sports.  Whether it’s appropriate at college/university level of play, I don’t know.  What I do know is it is not appropriate to stress win at all costs in High School sport and below.

I’ve coached here in Erin for seven years.  Many of you have seen me coaching.  I always appear to be coaching to win – anything less isn’t fair to the players.  As I started with…

Winning is fun.

Losing is not.

Having said this twice I now add, “Winning isn’t everything.”

Winning is the hook to teaching people

1)     To do their best,

2)     To believe in themselves,

3)     Dedication,

4)     Teamwork,

5)     Leadership and responsibility,

6)     Sportsmanship,

7)     Personal life scheduling and time management, and

8)     Lifelong friendships…the list goes on

When I started coaching I had trouble with the coach to win, shoot to score, play to win concepts.  They somehow did not fit for me and what I wanted to do for and with young players.  As I struggled with these concepts of “win” at all costs, I sought help.  All I got back was don’t be so intense, or don’t get so involved, or relax, take it easy coaching isn’t a life and death affair.

Rubbish as help.  I am naturally intense.  I am naturally highly involved.  Winning is important.  Being anything less was counter my personality.

There had to be a way to share my

1)     intense

2)     involvement and

3)     winning

so as to maximize all three.

A year of personal work, of personal change went into integrating all three into a better way of coaching.  In the end I could be more intense, more involved, and win more than ever before.

The shift was off winning.

The shift was simple in words.  Difficult in execution.

The first insight into non-emphasis on winning came in teaching a young lady to shoot to score a foul shot.  I wound up adjusting and changing her shot, all to no avail.  No improvement worked until I taught her to “believe this shot is going in.”  When she believed her 20% foul shot went instantly to 80%.

“Believe you can make it”, a form of believe you can win, became simply, “Believe.”

And then came the radical shift to what I should have seen in the first place.  Don’t coach believe you can score (win), coach, “Believe in yourself.”

Believe in yourself, a concept so superior to win, win, win.  A concept whose message is bigger than just win.  A concept whose message is of lifelong value.  A concept beyond winning.  A concept that allowed me to be more intense, more involved, and more winning as a coach than ever before.

I remember in the early days of “Believe”, going on a road game and having yelled believe to the Erin team a number to times to suddenly hear the opposing, home team crowd picking up believe and shouting it at the Erin players.  We won, thanks to believe, going away with support from our opponent’s crowd.  I smiled.  I loved it.  Erin players enjoyed it too.

The strange thing about believe is how most people and most other teams don’t us it.  “Believe”, hollered by me at Erin players falls on dumb (not deaf) ears of our opponents.  They have little idea of the value of Believing In Yourself.  (Norman Vincent Peale, Napoleon Hill, et al, would find this lack of believe understanding as most distressing.)

Believe in yourself de-emphasizes win, but ups a person’s internal level of confidence, something all of us can benefit from.  Strong self belief leads to winning but certainly doesn’t stress winning at all costs.  Winning is independent of believing in yourself.

The best was yet to come.  Believing wasn’t the end of my conversion off win.

Having established believe over win I still felt I wasn’t getting the kind of effort people were capable of.  Coaching is about bringing out the best in people.  Getting people’s best led to winning but didn’t stress winning.

Eureka  – There was the way for me to be intense and involved…stress to players that they give their best.  Suddenly teams were winning games they should have lost.  Erin players played better skilled teams than they were and won consistently.

Giving our best and believing in yourself became a non-win at any cost mechanism for winning but without any stress on winning.  The stress was on personal development.

It works, but I’m puzzled.  People see me as a coach who stresses winning.  I don’t.  I stress sound skill development, and believing in yourself, and giving of your best.

It seems the world can think of winning only.  People accuse you of trying to hard for wins when that’s not what you’re doing.  Yes, I love to win, but to lose when having given of your best is no shame.

Yes, I push for best.  Yes, I want and expect the best from players.  In fact, I strive to have players continually better their best.  Winning matters not.  It’s nice…but let me tell you seeing a player or team better their previous best, is better than a win any day.