| Seeing the Big Picture |
By Rick Burns
An old coach’s tale: A wise old coach tells his young assistant, “There are two wolves fighting within me. One of them is prideful, burning with ambition and desperate to win and gain honors; the other is humane, compassionate and eager to teach life lessons.” The young coach asks, “Which one will win, my mentor?” The wise old coach answers, “The one I feed.”
I propose that coaches, especially NCAA Division III coaches, need to feed the second wolf more. The relentless pursuit of winning, regardless of collateral costs, can cause us to lose the opportunity to influence our students’ lives in a fuller sense. We must burn through the fog of this excessive drive for results or risk losing our humanity. The primary quality of a good coach is humility, not pride. (Can you picture a football team running out of the locker room pounding their palms on a sign that says “HUMILITY”?)
I know stern, purposeful coaches whose goal every year is to win a national championship. This hollow pomp will almost definitely lead to failure. That loud sucking sound you hear is the joy of the game being drained away from these coaches and their athletes. If they don’t win titles, are they failures even if they trained well, played hard and gave everything they had? Do these coaches lose credibility when they set these unrealistic expectations? There is no give here. The singular pursuit of victory at the expense of all else can lead only to unhappiness.
For educators, teaching good lifelong values trumps results, standings and championships. If the athletic experience does not offer our athletes an endless string of teaching moments, we should not be linking it with the academy. Here is a value that I teach: the pursuit of excellence is as honorable as the achievement. My colleagues gasp when I say this; little muscles in their face involuntarily contract; they nod gape-mouthed and conversation dissolves. Surely there is room for different points of view here? Teaching that simply trying your best can be the end in itself is a great life lesson.
You can’t always control winning (the other team is trying hard to win, too) or even the quality of your performance, but you can control effort. I teach my players that you can do only so much; but you have to do that much. It is assumed that we all want to win. Victory is joyous, ego-enhancing, gratifying and validating. But more good teaching moments come from losing: endurance, humility and the grace and confidence that come when losing without excuse. (Usually the reason we lose contests is that the other team is simply better – can’t we just say this sometimes?)
We can teach our players that winners aren’t better people; that champions have flaws and fifth-place teams have virtues and that as the Rolling Stones sang, “You can’t always get what you want.” We can’t screen out the unhappy times, the pain or the disappointment that a season brings. As the profound blue-haired philosopher Marge Simpson said when speaking to Lisa after a disappointment in her life, “If you feel sad, be sad, we’ll ride it out together.”
Another analogy: As a college instructor I get frustrated with my students who are grade grubbers rather than seeking true learning. They are compromising the learning experience by striving to achieve high marks at the expense of fully embracing the course. As coaches we can become “win grubbers” rather than using our great power to offer a comprehensive learning experience.
The educator/coach that teaches good life lessons is being replaced by the quasi-professional coach driven and pressured to achieve results above all else. Many of my colleagues seem to share the values of professional athletes and coaches that say it’s “all about the ring” or “the trophy is what counts.” Winning is wonderful, and championships and honors are ego-enhancing for our players, but obsession with results brings trade-offs, things like endless recruiting and year-round training that steal from the athletes’ total college experience.
My team is blissfully unsullied by pressures for results. As a result, they are a harmonious, relaxed lot that seem to be enjoying their experience. Such lovely, tumultuous, probing kids they are, with life’s blank pages yet to be filled! We are keen to win. I demand that they play with passion (“don’t you dare come off that field without giving everything!”), but my players know that there is much more going on here. I exult in the potential I have to use my power to nurture them. And they watch me closely for inconsistencies (“by your deeds shall they know you”). I think I have finally figured out what my players want and need from me:
1. That I enjoy being with them.
2. That I know what I’m doing.
3. That I am committed to fulfilling our potential (Disclaimer: Knowing what they want is not the same as doing it. I fall short annually)
My experience with players tells me that they don’t remember records and victories as much as simply taking heart in the small things of seasons past. When I reconnect with them, my former players speak not of records and standings but of personal, anecdotal experiences and positive social interactions with their teammates. They don’t remember seasons; they remember moments (things like sliding across a wet field after training, watching me walk into a glass door, or a great goal by a teammate). But I’ve found that these meaningful moments often are not recognized at the time by 18- to 22-year-old kids. Only later are they able to measure and appreciate their full experience. Sometimes I wish they would show more appreciation for me now—which means they either:
1. Don’t think of it or
2. Actually don’t appreciate me
Here is a great goal for all coaches: Have your players 10 years later, at 30 years of age, be able to say that their athletic experience was enjoyable, meaningful and memorable. That’s what I want. I don’t expect a whole lot more.
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