Our Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal!
How the Sessions are Different
I explain quickly, "Not exactly. I suggest you tell the coach that you know you can get the next girl out so give me another chance!" Although I understand Emma's logic, that players think they are helping the team by removing their poor-performing selves from the game, I explain several different concepts. You only fail when you give up. You always have to believe that the next pitch is going to be a great one. A good attitude regardless of the circumstance raises performance. And finally, it’s your coach's decision on who should be put in or taken out, not yours - even if she asks.
We just wrapped up our first summer camp of the year, and one of my favorite parts of coaching is that I learn something new every time. We've been running these two-day camps for five years, and while many of the activities stay the same, the athletes always teach me something different.
We end camp with an obstacle course competition where the winning team earns a prize—this year it was gummy worms and a cute yellow bag tag featuring one of my favorite Aristotle quotes: "You are what you repeatedly do. Therefore, excellence is not an act, but a habit."
Every year seems to have a theme of mistakes we’ve made coaching. Once we fix it, the next year, another one pops up. One year we had to teach athletes how to cheer for one another a little better. Another year we learned that handing out Practice Pro gear at the very end helped everyone leave happier. This year, the theme was fairness.
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I hear it all the time, “Is there some kind of trick that I can use during a game to prevent me from going into a downward spiral?” It’s frustrating (and even more confusing) to start off well and then lose this “groove” later in the game.
While at first it seems sometimes coaches over-analyze what could have happened…”she got tired”, “she lost it mentally”, “she stopped performing her mechanics properly,” and so on, at second thought, I believe this is an under-analysis or a faulty analysis without proper work on the back end to diagnose issues and adjust practice accordingly. In order to identify the issue take a cue from college teams. They are always recording a huge amount of stats throughout the games. For them, there is no “guessing” when it comes to the issues they face during game time. They try to make it as objective, and therefore easy, as possible to make decisions.