Tag Archives: Coaching

June 20, 2015 · 8:06 PM

Be Indelible

I used to confuse the word indelible with the word inedible. So when I’d see a permanent marker with “Indelible Ink” printed on it, I’d think, “No $#@!, Sherlock! Who would want to eat a Sharpie anyway?”

Now I’m slightly smarter…well, enough smarter to know that inedible and indelible are completely different things. Indelible means to make a lasting mark—it means that something will not be forgotten or removed.

I like that.

Indelible.

I want to coach and develop indelible athletes.

I want to produce indelible writing.

I want to make an indelible impact on my communities.

I want to be indelible.

MarkerParticipate or Compete?
As an athlete, or as part of any organization, which are you choosing to be?

The participant shows up most of the time and, more often than not, jumps into the wagon to go for the ride.

The competitor is the one who pulls the wagon and makes everyone around them better. The competitor is the very definition of indelible. The competitor is never satisfied with their current efforts and performances. A competitor does the things the participator refuses to do.

What does a competitor do? Well, in high school sports, in my opinion, the competitor is the athlete who puts in the extra offseason work to improve at least 4 or 5 days a week.

  • Baseball – 50 throws & catches, 50 swings, 50 ground balls/pop-ups.
  • Football – Explosive power development, 25 starts and footwork reps, routes, and throws.
  • Basketball – 250+ shots a day, ball-handling skills, explosive power development.
  • Tennis, golf, volleyball, etc. – All need skills reps

All In
I am a firm believer in playing multiple sports and being involved in multiple activities, hobbies, etc. But, the work and the commitment to all these activities requires a monumental effort. The key is to, as the wonderful Mrs. Hays often says about life and work and parenting, “Be present.” Pay attention to the needs of the situation staring you in the face. Focus 100% on the task at hand and not 60% with the other 40% worrying about the next activity on you agenda.

Be Present = Go All In

Whatever you do in life, go all in. Jump into the fray feet first with a fully-focused effort. Don’t straddle the border with one foot in and one foot out. Hit the accelerator and give your drive and desire full throttle to make your world a better place.

That is the very meaning of indelible.

Go all in.

Compete, don’t just participate.

Leave a lasting mark.

Be Indelible

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May 29, 2015 · 7:45 PM

Herding Cats

Sometimes coaching high school kids feels akin to an attempt at wrangling a dozen cats out the backyard gate while avoiding a fully-functioning sprinkler head. In other words…utter chaos.

A team and each individual kid on that team needs direction–they need to know where they are supposed to go and some idea of how to get there. One of the knocks from I hear way too often from coaches is today’s kids don’t care, they don’t “buy” into what the coach is selling.

The truth is, today’s kids are probably brighter and sharper and have an increased problem-solving capacity than we ever did. They want to know what you are asking them to do, why you are asking them to do it, and where is it going to take them. Kids today have very well-honed bullshit meters.

They are skeptical and need to be convinced the plan and vision you present to them is the real deal. Where us grumpy, old folks used to accept what we were given and did what we were told, these kids want to know the bigger picture and see what is beyond blind acceptance. And they have the collective power of the internet and social media for information.

One of the first coaching lessons I learned from Paul Lane in football and Rex Carlson in baseball was to be upfront and be honest. These two fine coaches taught me the athletes cannot read my mind and need to be told and shown what I need them to do. Tell the kids what we are going to do, why we are going to do it, and how it will make them better as an individual and as a team.

Another knock against the kids is they just don’t get it. “They spend too much time sitting in front of their video games or have their faces glued to their phones.” You all know the attitude. The grumpy old man, stay-off-my-lawn you juvenile, drug addicted, delinquent” attitude we often have toward the habits of youth.

Kids today want a vision. They want (and desperately need) someone to recognize their potential and help them map out a path to achieve it. I’ve said this a hundred times, but everybody wants to win. Everybody wants to be a success. They just need the plan and the guidance.

That’s what the successful coach is able to do.

Dream the plan.
Devise the plan.
Sell the plan.
Implement the plan.

And then drive the individual and the team in the right direction and never let them take their eyes off the prize.

Just like successfully herding a dozen of the cutest, most well-behaved cats out of the back yard, your athletes will eventually find their goal—but you’ll always end up worn to a frazzle and sporting a few fresh scratches.

Vision.
Direction.
Communication

The keys to the kingdom.

“Cats on Beach” by haitham alfalah – haitham alfalah. Licensed under Attribution via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cats_on_Beach.JPG#/media/File:Cats_on_Beach.JPG

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April 10, 2015 · 7:59 PM

Finding Their Missing Somethings

“Let me tell you something, Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz was one of the great all-time leaders. She took three people that were missing something and had them look back inside themselves to find something they thought they never had. She wanted to go home, that was mission No.1, but in the end it was all about everyone else.”

I read this quote from Clint Hurdle, manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, in Sports Illustrated’s 2015 Major League Baseball Preview. Not only is it a statement about what a good leader does, it is perhaps the best distillation of the very essence of The Wizard of Oz I have ever seen.

wonderful-wizard-oz-l-frank-baum-paperback-cover-art

A leader seeks their own goal by helping everyone around them find what makes them better. A coach needs to pay attention to know what each of his or her players desires or needs and work with that athlete to make them better. When the collective individual goals are met, the team goals often follow for the coach. The devil is in the details. The devil is in making every single individual who walks through your door better on a daily basis.

I saw another fitting quote in a training and conditioning magazine this past week from Coach Mark Morrison, who is Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for Hendrick Motorsports. On the subject of training individuals and the myriad of training philosophies/programs available, Coach Morrison said,

“At the end of the day, as long as you are developing happy, healthy, strong, lean, and agile athletes, you have done your job.”

Truth! Write this in stone and live by it. Be the coach who, like Dorothy, finds the missing somethings in your athletes. Be the coach who helps them be happy, healthy, strong, lean, and agile athletes.

You will be a happier (and more successful) coach because of it.

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January 20, 2015 · 7:13 PM

What is best?

High school-aged kids are going to screw up.  That’s a given.  It is part of being young and stupid.  You think you will not get caught, you think nobody will know or find out, and you think nobody cares.  As a parent and coach, I don’t like it.  I wish kids wouldn’t behave badly. I wish they would make good decisions 100% of the time 24/7.  But they don’t.  The learning curve of life is shaped by mistakes and failures.

But, what do we adults do? Do we turn a blind eye? Do we slap their wrist and tell them not to repeat the bad behavior event? Do we bring the hammer down?

Tough questions. I have no good answer. I don’t like the solution which completely takes away the activity from the kid. In our high school, I felt football kept a great number of our young men coming to school every day (more than any of us wanted to admit). Being part of the team kept them connected. Without the sport and without the team, many of them drifted away.

Paddle

With a sports coach, I like the multi-facet discipline approach to a player in trouble. I think the most effective enforcement comes three directions—the parent, the administrator, and the coaching staff. Not too severe from either direction, but enough to turn the thumb screws and make life in trouble an uncomfortable situation for the kid.

Not easy topics.  Mistakes and punishment are right at the bottom of the list of things coaches want to take care of during a season. But, they happen. They happen more than any of us want to admit. When they do occur, how we handle these issues has a long-term positive or negative impact on the kid. No pressure, right?

I don’t know the way to solve all these problems. High school kids will continue to get in trouble. Are we going to respond in a way the helps the kid in the long run or hurts the kid in the long run?

It’s never easy.

 

 

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January 18, 2015 · 10:00 AM

Coach Hays Rant: Not A Fan

“I’m not going to play this spring (or winter)(or summer) because I’m gonna lift.”

This phrase, when spoken from a high school athlete makes me cringe. I know what it means, I’ve been there. I used this excuse myself as a senior in high school and didn’t go out for wrestling. Here is the interpretation that enters my brain through the coach translation area of my cerebral cortex when I hear that phrase from a high school kid.

“I don’t want to play __________ because I really don’t want to work that hard.”

95% of the kids I’ve heard the “I’m going to lift” mantra from fail at this goal miserably. Sure, they show up in the weight room, but very little work gets done.

Rings

I admit I’m not a fan of the recent rise in the high school sport of powerlifting. Sure, it’s all pretty cool, but is it doing justice to our athletes? Are we pushing kids into powerlifting participation (even though it’s not a sanctioned competitive sport by the state athletic association) at the expense of other sports they could, and should, be participating in? Is powerlifting becoming the focus over the actual sports a high school offers?

Truth is you get better at sports by playing sports. The training component is vital, but it is still just a component. Playing multiple sports gives one an edge in physicality, in conditioning, and in competitiveness, which is such an important component, yet so overlooked. Give me eleven young, high school men who know how to compete and I will knock the mother-loving socks off your 300 lb. bench pressers who spend 8 months of their year lifting.

Plate

Explosive power development requires speed, agility, quickness, and strength. That strength is a certain type of strength—an explosive strength derived from a specific technical approach. Like I’ve said many times before, I want to develop bullets rather than bowling balls. Powerlifting as the primary focus does not build athletes. Period.

Moral of the story…play a sport whenever you can. It is the best “big picture” thing you can do. Don’t get stuck on the one particular tree and forget all about the forest.

  • The first step is to compete.
  • The second step is to practice with an approach to improve.
  • The third step is to attack a well-rounded physical training program to develop physically, mentally, and emotionally.
  • The fourth step…enjoy the ride.
  • The fifth step is to repeat steps one through four as often as possible.

Time is precious. Make the most of every tick of the clock and work to be the best you that you can be.

Hard work is the magic.

Rant over. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

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November 10, 2014 · 8:15 PM

Be “Less”

We are always asking and/or being asked to give more. Work harder, work more, work faster.

That’s okay, though. Keep it up and keep those “more” things going strong.

But, I am going to ask you for “less”.

Yeah, you read that right. LESS.

Be ageless, think young and perform young.

Be responsible for yourself, do your job and be blameless.

Boundless. Never quit striving to be better.

Leave opponents, fans, and teammates breathless with your effort.

Perform with reckless abandon.

Be dauntless.

Appear effortless in your execution using technical expertise.

Endless in your energy, enthusiasm, and desire.

Do your job and go on…Be a faceless and nameless force to reckon with.

Be fearless. Identify what you want and go get it.

Be merciless in a contest from the first bell to the final bell. (Then be nice again.)

As you can see, sometimes more is not better.

Sometimes “less” is more.

LessSmall

 

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February 20, 2014 · 9:08 PM

Cultivate Hope

Hope. It’s big. It’s one of those things that make us human, one of those things that drive us. Hope helps us get out of bed every day to face our challenges.

As a coach, the most important thing I can do for the kids in the program is to cultivate hope. I want to sow an environment with an expectation and a desire for a certain thing to happen, a goal to obtain, i.e. HOPE. Show up every day, to every practice, every meeting, every game dealing hope. Make this hope permeate everything we do as a team and as a program.

And this is not just important for coaches to deal in hope. It’s even more important for:

  • Teachers
  • Writers
  • Political leaders
  • Manager
  • Supervisors
  • CEO’s

Anybody who leads people needs to radiate hope. It doesn’t matter if you deal with one person or one hundred people, cultivate hope. It doesn’t even matter if you are just dealing with your own self, be hopeful.

I’ve seen hopeless. I’ve seen the hopelessness settle into a long losing streak or miserable season. I’ve seen the dull, lifeless eyes of hopelessness standing on a mid-afternoon street corner passing a bottle. The hopelessness which exists in poverty, substance abuse, mental abuse, and physical abuse.

The black cloud of hopelessness works to settle over our world on a daily basis. Hopelessness with the sole purpose to suck the life and energy from us. It is up to us as leaders to wage war on hopelessness by cultivating hope in everything we do.

Everyone, especially young people, need someone to believe they can do whatever task stands in front of them. They need hopeful eyes to help them see the person they can be. They need a ray of hope to help them fight the black clouds which follow them waiting for an open space to inhabit.

Hope is cheap.
Hope is infectious.
Hope is a super power.
Sow it, cultivate it, and spread it.

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July 25, 2013 · 7:00 PM

The Whole Alphabet

I was (am) a developmental coach. It’s what I do, teach the basics, build the fundamentals, and show kids how to compete. To me, the development of athletes is the core job of a sports coach.

In fact, for about any endeavor which requires training or supervision of people, the development of resources (people) is vital to a successful organization. Teachers develop kids; senior scientists take young scientists under their wing and show them what they know. Artists, writers, welders, mechanics all do the same, help develop the young or fledgling talent that comes knocking at the door.

Like I said, I am a developmental coach. The goal is to build a player from the ground up. Start with a fundamental foundation of physical movement skills and lay the bricks onto the foundation one at a time until a complete player begins to form.

Brick by brick we get better.

A coach can never emphasize enough the importance of the learning the playbook in football and baseball. We can work the fundamentals until we are blue in the face, but if the athlete fails to do the mental work necessary to burn the plays and responsibilities in their head, we are not going to be successful.

Below is one of my standard (and favorite) things to say to the young JV football or baseball players in order to get across the importance of studying and learning the plays to the point they become second nature.  

“The playbook is like the alphabet. If you learn all the letters, you can make any word you want. The world becomes wide open to you. If all you learn is A, B, and C, then the only word you can make is ‘CAB’.  You’ve severely limited yourself. And people, you can’t get very far in life when all you have in the arsenal is ‘CAB’.”

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June 18, 2013 · 8:35 PM

Coach Hays Rant: The Questions?

Recently, I read “Who Could That Be at This Hour?” by Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler). It is the first book in the new All the Wrong Questions series. You may remember the author’s previous book series, the wonderful A Series of Unfortunate Events. The new book chronicles the career beginnings of the 13-year-old Lemony Snicket.

13314914031993458145question-mark-hi

The new series is called All the Wrong Questions for a good reason. The young Snicket, according to his recently appointed chaperone, S. Theodora Markson, is always asking the wrong questions. The book is very entertaining and I recommend it highly, but it also raised a question is my coaching mind:

For a player, teammate, coach, or parent, what are the right questions?

I have been pondering this practical and philosophical question rattling about in my head for the past few weeks. I still don’t have a concrete answer. Maybe it would be beneficial to start with some of the wrong questions and then consider what the right questions may be.

The WRONG Questions

  • You lost? Again?
  • Why did you strike out?
  • Why don’t watch this videotape of your miserable performance with me?
  • Do you believe those umpires/referees/officials so bad?
  • What in the world was that idiot Coach Hays thinking tonight?
  • Can’t you ever do anything right?
  • Why didn’t you win?
  • What in heaven’s name were you doing out there?

The RIGHT Questions

  • Do you enjoy the game?
  • Did you give your best?
  • Do you feel you prepared yourself properly?
  • Are there things you’d do differently?
  • Did you get better?
  • Are you a good teammate?
  • Were you respectful of the game?

Next time you are involved in a sporting event, either as a player, parent, or fan, stick to the RIGHT questions and avoid the WRONG questions. Attempt to promote the sport in a positive manner, win, lose, or draw. I know it is hard, very hard. But I think you will be surprised how much more you can enjoy the sport by sticking to the spirit of the RIGHT questions.

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May 15, 2013 · 7:03 PM

Coach Hays Rant: Summertime!

Summer conditioning time is coming around the mountain, boys and girls. Time for a few Coach Hays rants to get the ball rolling. Of all the things about coaching high school sports I could miss, the sidelines, the dugout, the practices, etc., the one one thing I miss (besides the kids) is summer conditioning. I don’t think too many summer programs across the state did things the way we did back then. Every minute of summer had to be intense, focused, and productive.

Iron

Why?

  • The professional teams draft the cream of the crop and then develop them.
  • College programs recruit the best they can find and then develop them.
  • High school programs (except for the few private schools) take what walks through your door and then drive and push them to develop into the best they can be.

We had to do things different. We didn’t have big kids, we didn’t have fast kids, and we had very few superstar raw talents. We had to work our butts off. We had to maximize what we had, which was tough, hard working kids. Looking back, I wouldn’t trade our kids for anything, though I wish we could have had their 22 year-old bodies when they were 17. Late bloomers.

Rings

I miss it. I miss the groans and moans at 6:30 AM. I miss the energy of 50 kids working hard. I miss pushing them to do things the right way, every time. I loved it and I did it every day from June to mid-August for nine summers for a whopping cumulative salary of $0.00. Best job I ever had.

I will always be extremely proud of what we were able to accomplish with the resources we were allocated and the meager school support. I am proud to have achieved the results we did through the incredible effort, the desire to improve, and the high level of buy-in from the kids.

Plate

Man, alive! It gets me excited just thinking about it. Get busy, Kids of Summer 2013. Take advantage of your opportunities. Get in touch if you have a question or need some help. I’ll be glad to help if you have something you want to work on.

Hard work is the magic.

Here’s a little something to roll around in your head until the next rant on “Easy”:

The Coach Hays High School Sports Roles

The Athlete – Show up everyday with the desire and effort to get better.

The Coach – Show up everyday with the desire and the plan to make athletes better.

The Parent – Be your athlete’s biggest fan and supporter.

The Official/Umpire – Please be patient and take into account that Coach Hays is an idiot.

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