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!