Viking Coach

**Adapted from David Gibson, Fort Wayne, Indiana

People accuse me of “having favorites” on our team. (The feeling is that this is a terrible sin.)

They’re right. . . I do have favorites. . . My favorites are those athletes who most enthusiastically do what I ask of them.

To those players that give this effort, I give more attention.

I talk to them more. . .I spend more time teaching them. . .I also expect more of them.

The implication is made that my favorites improve more than others because they are my favorites, and that is somehow unfair.

Don’t mistake cause for effect!

The fact is that the athletes who come to me ready to learn, ready to listen, ready to act on what they learn, and try it my way even if it is more challenging and difficult than they imagined, are ready to get more out of our program.

Thus, they are my favorites!

As a coach, I have only one thing to offer an athlete. What I can offer is my attention.

This means that I attend to their needs. The reward for good behavior should be attention.

The consequence of a poor attitude, a lack of effort, an unwillingness or unreadiness to learn, or just plain offensive or disruptive behavior, is my inattention to that athlete.

How can it be any other way?

If you have three children, and you spend all of your time and energy working with one that displays negative behavior, what does that tell your other two children? It tells them that to capture your attention, they should behave poorly.

What we reward is what we get!

As a coach, I want athletes who are eager to learn, eager to experiment, eager to improve and eager to work hard.

I want athletes who come to me for help in developing their mental and physical skill and are willing to accept what I have to offer.

It is this type of athlete that I am going to reward with my attention.

In doing so, I encourage others to become like the athlete above. If I spent my time with the unwilling and/or disruptive player, I would only be encouraging undesirable behavior.

I want to forge a link between attention and excellence. Excellence is the sense of achieving all that is possible and desired. My way of making this happen is to provide knowledge and attention to those who “attend” to me.

This does result in increase performance for those that do so. I am a good coach, and when I pay attention to a person, that person is going to improve. Over time, this makes it appear that my “favorites” are the better basketball players. Not so at all. The better basketball players are those that pay attention, and thus become my favorites.

What the accusing person doesn’t realize is that you must have favorites if anyone is to develop in a positive fashion. The coach’s job is to reward those who exhibit positive developmental behaviors. Those are my “favorites”, and they should be.

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Wow!!! David Gibson I salute you. When I wrote this down I felt like I was actually the author.

Too many people feel that every player should be accepted and treated equally, no matter what is brought to the table. . . I'm sorry but that's just not the way things work.

If your kid is struggling with the coach. . . make sure you take a hard look at the role your child is playing.

Over the years my boys have gotten into a number of arguments with each other. When they come to me with their complaints against each other the first thought in my mind is. . ."what did you do?"

When I ask my boys this question they love to continue to tell me what their brother did to them. . .I continue my quest with. . ."I didn't ask you what he did, I want to know what you did." Eventually I find out what they did and I work to get them to understand their role in the problem. (It is amazing how big of a role each play in getting a fight started!)

I think the best thing that you can teach a child is to look at their role in an interpersonal relationships.

Too often a parent will side with their child and not pursue the other side of the story.

Parents. . .Trust your child but not the "devil" inside!

How many of you will outwardly admit your role in situation if it makes you look bad? Children want your approval and they will, at times, not give you what Paul Harvey calls, "the rest of the story".

If you want to help your child succeed in sports, school and life you will help them learn that what they do and the attitude they bring to life situations have a huge impact on how they are treated.

Good Day!

I wrote this back during the basketball season and I just happened upon it. . . Ya'll just sit back and enjoy this one, ya' hear!


“Oh coach. . . don’t yell at her.” I wonder how many times these words, or something to that affect, have been uttered, whispered or thought by parents as they have watched me interact with my players(their daughters) on the court.

Parents. . . believe it or not. . . these “intense situations”, that sometime occur between your daughter and I, can help your daughter develop an important personal attribute that will help her be a successful person in the future. That attribute is MENTAL TOUGHNESS.

In his book ”Raising an All-American”, Devin Durrant noted a business executive who stated that he is always looking to hire athletes because he knew athletes had been put in situations where they had been criticized and that they had developed the mental toughness to bounce back and continue to do their job. We are constantly inundated with the benefits of athletics in our lives. This is just another example of how something that is sometimes seen as a negative is part of an important life lesson.

Right now I am coaching a group of really nice girls. They are kind, caring and have done everything I have asked of them this year. I want to compliment the parents for doing a great job of raising their daughters. Over the course of the year I have come to the conclusion that the girls don’t quite know how to turn off the “nice” and turn on the “competitive”.

Being competitive and being mentally tough go hand-in-hand. You really can’t have one without the other. Devin Durrant calls it being “Rodeo Tough”. (Being intensely competitive by being mentally and physically strong.)

I want the girls I coach to be the best that they can be. To do this they must not only be taught the physical side of the sport but I feel it is just as important to teach them how successful people think. Everyone knows the importance of having a good attitude and we are constantly talking about being team players, making a commitment, giving 100%, etc, etc. . .

However, to keep that positive attitude, to stay focused on the team, to make a commitment to excellence. . . you have to have mental toughness. A big part of my job is putting players into situations where they have to work on their mental fortitude. I feel that the same holds true for me as a parent.

Maybe the importance of this aspect of sports is amplified by the fact that my father died when I was just seven years old and I have always wondered what I would have been like if I would have had a dad around to “toughen me up”.

I have always been a pretty competitive person but I really wasn’t a player my coaches would call mentally tough. I felt I had two major weaknesses as an athlete:

A) I was unable to control my emotions
B) I didn't know how to push myself to be my best.

These two weaknesses definitely limited my ability to be the best that I could have been and so it has motivated me to allow my boys to experience situations where they have and will gain mental toughness.

A lot of these situations have really boiled down to helping them deal with their frustrations.

Basically just showing them how anger can hurt them or help them. . . how getting frustrated and crying doesn’t help solve the problem and then giving them different ways to deal with the situation. . .or helping them understand that sometimes things just aren’t fair and you can let it break you or find away to succeed anyway.

Here is an example of this at work:

We often play different types of ball games in our yard. The games pit my bigger than average 13 year old against my smaller than average 10 year old. One of their favorite games is a baseball game I call “batter up”. One brother would go out into the field, my neighbor lady's back yard, while the other was the base runner. Who's ever at the plate will pretend to bat and I will throw the ball at all sorts of different trajectories and make the other brother run and try to catch the ball and get the three outs before the other would score too many runs.

Needless to say. . . the winner of the game was the son I chose to win.

Sometimes I would frustrate one on purpose by giving him much harder catches to catch just to see how he would handle the situation. Sometime one of them would get too angry and would do an “unsportsman” like action and I would add a run or two to their brothers total as a penalty. This would really get them mad, but they knew that if they continued they would lose the game or I would just call the game “finished” due to poor attitude.

Most of the time I did try to be as fair as possible and this was a fun night outside for the boys and I but there were games where tears flowed and lessons were taught. On these nights the purpose was to put them in situations where they would learn how to be “Rodeo Tough”.

Nobody likes to be scolded, yelled at or told they are not doing something right. That’s where the mental toughness side of the equation comes into play. A player needs to understand that the ultimate goal of the coach is to improve their performance. They need to be tough enough to cut through the delivery of the message and get down to the message itself. This will not only help them get better at their sport but will also help them handle the pressures that will come at them in life.

I told Casey when he was going into seventh grade that I thought it would be good for him and his buddies to get into sports and get pushed by a coach. Casey has come home a few times with his tail between his legs after a practice or a game but that’s when I step in and talk about what happened, why it happened and what the best response would be. I encourage all parents to do the same. Helping your child deal effectively with the challenges of sports is one of the best ways you can positively impact the team and more importantly how your child handles life’s frustrations as she gets older.

Parents/Players:

This post is for you to organize yourself for a fun summer of dreaming big and working to win!

I’m really excited about the future of our basketball program. I feel we are starting to get more and more players eager to work on their games in the off-season. This “eagerness” is the biggest key to any future success we will experience.

Time and money are usually big issues when looking at summer activities.

We have tried to keep the cost to a minimum for our athletes this year and have used our fundraisers to help defer the cost of a lot of our sessions.

We want all of our girls to have the opportunity to take full advantage of our summer programs. We will work with you to figure out a plan to get you to whatever you want to attend if you have the desire to attend a basketball event but don’t have the funding,

The biggest ticket item of the summer is the Northern Camp at Aberdeen. (I think we will have 20+ players in grades 5 through 12 going to this camp!)

Camp cost = $265.00 (June 10th – 13th)

Our local camp is set up so a person can attend 1, 2 or all 3 sessions. . .of course I recommend all three!!!

Viking camp costs = $15.00/1 seesion $25.00/2 sessions or $30.00/all 3 sessions
Sessions: June 4, 5 & 6 / June 26, 27 & 28 / July 17, 18 & 19

Our Mini Northern Camp is available to girls going into grades 7 – 12 and any player that attended the Northern Camp in Aberdeen (June 20 & 21)

Mini-Camp cost =$50.00 (Camp is free for those attending the Northern Camp in Aberdeen)

Power and Performance is available to Girls going into grades 7 – 12. P & P is a strength and conditioning program run by Brenda Haugrud.

The cost of P & P = $50.00.

Other Plans:
*Monday night league at Fergus Falls Hillcrest for Varsity – Free if charge
*Brainerd team camp in July for Varsity – Free of charge
*D.L Team Camp for this year’s 6th and 7th graders – Free of Charge
*Mag 7 Sessions after Power and Performance sessions – Free of Charge.

If you chose to do everything you are looking at a cost of $345.00. I feel this is a really good deal for the opportunities you are getting.


SUMMER OPPORTUNITIES

Forms need to be filled out and return
*Pelican Camps – (3 Sessions) •$15.00 for 1 session •$25.00 for 2 sessions •$30.00 for all 3 sessions (Next year’s 7th – 12th – Form in packet)

*Northern Camp – (June 10th – 13th) •$265.00 (Next year’s 3rd – 12th – Form in packet)

*Pelican Rapids’ Mini Northern Camp – (June 20 & 21) (Next year’s 6th – 12th – Form in packet) •Cost $50.00
→ This camp will be free of charge to those attending the Northern Camp

*Power & Performance Training – (July 10th - August 16th) (Next year’s 7th – 12th – Form in packet) $50.00 Fee – Run by Brenda Haugrud
→ If you make 10 of the 12 sessions you get a $25.00 refund!!!



Other activities:
*Varsity Travel League – (Monday nights starting on June 11th) - This will be for girls who are going into 9th through 12th Grade. ( No Cost to Players)

*Shada – (June 15th – 17th) Oraganize a team and compete!!!!!\

*Detroit Lakes Team Camp (June 22nd – This year’s 7th // June 29th – This year’s 6th grade)

*Varsity Team Camp – (Friday June 29th) - This will be for girls who are going into 9th through 12th Grade. (No Cost to Players)

*Brainerd Team Camp – (July 10th & 11th) - This will be for girls who are going into 9th through 12th Grade. A practice session will be held on the morning of Monday, July 9th for this group. (No Cost to Players)

*Mag 7 Sessions – (After Power and Performance)