The Forward Pass, "A Dangerous Risk"

By Dan Duddy

Head Football Coach NJ

In 1906 the game of football legally changed in a way that it otherwise wouldn’t sell a 10 second commercial today. We wouldn’t know the phrase “Montana to Rice” nor would we cringe watching old highlights of the “Assassin”, Jack Tatum.

Funny thing is the forward pass was made legal because it was tried in a few desperate moments, for example in the 1876 Yale-Princeton game Walter Camp was about to be tackled and passed the ball forward, an indecisive referee actually tossed a coin to determine how he would call it.

The coin toss went in favor of Yale, and receiver Oliver Thompson was awarded what might be the first forward pass for a touchdown, yet still illegal.

In 1906 Teddy Roosevelt intervened with American Football when it become a possibility that the game would be abolished due to a rash of injuries, many fatal. There were 18 deaths reported in one year!

Roosevelt and the men of the newly formed NCAA would now make the game safer by bringing out “skills” and “speed” instead of the brutality of the way the game was being played. The NCAA was to change the game so to overcome the “brute strength” and the “force of weight” that “shook the ground” during “mass plays”.

The New York Times had its own thought on the ruling at the time, "There has been no team that has proved that the forward pass is anything but a doubtful, dangerous play to be used only in the last extremity."

I think it is every football coach’s dream to change the game with some scheme that just can’t be defended, or at least for a season or two until defenses catch up to it. Or maybe find a “hole” in the rule book that can influence the game forever, like the forward pass.

We don’t have great athletes all the time, or maybe not at all, and if we did it would really be quite boring. Heck, there wouldn’t be much of a need for us. We would find out at that moment that really anyone can coach football. The rules aren’t really difficult. On the other hand, try explaining the game of baseball to an alien. Football is easy. 

If there is a “hole” today in our game, and it’s in all games, football, basketball, and politics, it’s the one right under our collective noses, character. The greatest scheme we can choose to teach our athletes is “Character”.

We practice at my school the “inside veer” perhaps 100 repetitions each way, right and left, each week. Then when it comes to game time, “character” is something we “hope for” in order to execute and make count all that hard work.

If there is a trend in defenses, like say the “flat wall reading philosophy” of the defensive fronts in the 1980’s in order to overcome trapping, slashing and pulling offensive lineman, an offensive trend at the time, then why are we not taking real good care of another trend in order to stop opponents to get into the end zone today?

There isn’t a coach today that won’t complain about today’s athlete being a product of a culture that promotes mediocrity, selfishness, and lack of focus due to an ever stimulating and superficial world around them.

Heck my wife can read a practice script, break a huddle and film a practice of a b-zillion triple option plays. My players can look at the film and see what they did wrong.

But if the real culprit, unless of course you’re just out sized and maybe a whole lot slower than your opponent, is the probability of a “character flaw”, then why aren’t we practicing it with the same intensity or more?

Now I love my wife, but she CAN’T do that for other young men!

If there is a deficiency in character in our world, and our world includes our opponents, and our athletes belong to this world, and as men we can do something about character, and IT IS OK to WIN, then why are we not doing 100 reps of it per day?

“Bad character is like bad teeth, everyone sees it, and it’s a matter of choice”.

The game needs character and we all know it, the game needed the forward pass, and we didn’t know it until it mistakenly happened. It was considered a “risk” when it became legalized.

Teaching character is legal and we all need to take the risk of changing this game.

“You” are “more of the game” then Walter Camp was.

Well you could be anyway, but that’s a matter of choice.

Every Player Matters

By Chris Willertz

A few years ago I got a call from a former player I had coached.  Jason was a decent player (I only coached him his freshmen and sophomore years before I moved to another school).  He was around 5 foot 4 inches, 135 lbs., but was a motivated young player.  Anyways, Jason now had just been hired to run the weight room at his former high school and he was calling me for some advice on what the workouts should look like.  We decided to meet and go over what he wanted and what I had to offer.

The following week, Jason and I met.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  He was a junior in college, 5 foot 9 inches, 175 lbs., handsome, and really put together.  He was studying engineering and had well above a 3.5 GPA.  Needless to say, he was not the little freshmen I remembered six years earlier.  It turned out that Jason had had a mildly successful career in high school, being voted captain his senior year on a marginal team.  He had walked on the football team and baseball team in college……just to prove he could do it.  And he looked like the next contestant on the Bachelor!  So we spent the next two to three hours going over training regimens, planning times to watch and evaluate each others workouts and picking each others’ brains.  We talked and talked and talked.  Little did I know that this initial meeting would be the start of a lasting friendship. I am proud to say we have become close over the past four years.  I mean really close.

My point is, How many 5 foot 4 inch, 135 lbs players do you have walking around in your program?  I bet you have a bunch!  How much time do you spend coaching them?  How much do you really care about these guys??  It’s human nature to ignore the average kid, the below average kid, the obnoxious kid, the kid who can’t make the play if his life depended on it, the quiet kid.  We love to spend time talking to the studs, to coach the studs, to invest in the studs.  But it’s in the average kid that we need to invest our time.

Obviously, as a coach we need to coach and mentor every kid.  That is every coach’s responsibility.  But why should a coach invest more in the average kid?  I think first of all is in the law of averages…….there are more average kids around.  You mentor the average kids and you’ll be mentoring a lot of your players.  You’ll get a lot of “bang for your buck”.  Average kids are ignored……often.  They are the forgotten kids.  Nobody is celebrating them at school the next day after the big win.  Typically, they don’t have a huge fan base at the games(except probably the loyal mother and grandparents who don’t know or care their kid isn’t a stud!).  They NEED your love and attention, they need the approval of an adult coach they respect.

But I think the biggest reason why you should mentor and coach the average player is because you have no idea what the kid’s future holds.  Most coaches would persuade themselves that since the kid won’t be a big stud in athletics he shouldn’t waste his time, trying to get the most out of him.  What a narrow view!  Your players, no matter what profession they choose, will have to provide leadership, demonstrate courage and conviction, give generously and sacrifice.  They will be accountants, business managers, fathers, husbands, lawyers, military officers, etc..etc..etc.  They NEED your consul, your attention, your advice, your time…..regardless of how fast they run a 40 or how much they squat.

Coaches, don’t neglect any of your players!  Remember that you have been entrusted to serve them and to help mold them into the men, God created them to be.  If you do, you will be rewarded in this life and the eternal life that follows.  Thank you Jason for the man you have become and making me realize that a 14 year old teenager is just the tip of the iceberg.  You have become a strong, virtuous man and I am so proud of you……and I am thankful for being a part of your life.

Coach Willertz

Winton Woods Wrestling  “Where we train boys into championship wrestlers and championship men!”     Faith!  Focus!  Fight!

The Purpose of Sport

By Randy Traeger

Head Football Coach, Oregon

In this era when the post modern relative media bombards today’s youth with iniquitous images and sounds, sports stand out as an important counteractive tool to teach virtue. Our kids are feeding their minds out of the media’s garbage can of content. No wonder so many of them are sick. Due to the “charismatic” nature of sports, coaches (more than teachers, and even parents) have the undivided attention of their players. Having this attention places a great responsibility on the coach to use it for some greater good.  Lets use it to teach our players how to be virtuous.  In many ways sports should be considered the most important tool in our modern society for teaching virtue to our youth.
  
It’s time to redefine the purpose of sport.
  
Visit any youth sporting event and you will typically find numerous examples of all the wrong reasons why players, coaches, and parents participate in sports. Players throwing temper tantrums, coaches belittling players, parents screaming at umpires for making the wrong call.  In the last few years, irate parents and fans have even taken to physically assaulting coaches and referees. In the 8 to 13 year old age group, 70% of kids drop out of organized sports after the first year. That's a high number, so something is definitely wrong. A lot of time it's misguided player expectations, abusive coaching practices, or excess pressure placed on the player by the parents."
  
There has arisen an epidemic of participating in sports for “all the wrong reasons”.
  
Players: participating because their parents are forcing them to play, to become more popular, to be a champion, to become a pro athlete, to get a college scholarship, to win at all costs, to get a girlfriend or boyfriend, or because today’s modern media tells them that in order to be a man they must be athletic.
  
Coaches: coaching for the money, coaching to stroke their own ego’s, coaching to satisfy some repressed frustration for failing to fulfill their own athletic career, coaching their own son or daughter so they can live vicariously through them, coaching their own son or daughter in order to push them towards a college scholarship or other recognition.
  
Parents: having their son or daughter participate because it is a cheap babysitting option, encouraging participation so they can live vicariously through their son or daughter, fulfillment of some dream of a college scholarship, recognition, or a professional career, to keep up with the “Joneses”, or so my son/daughter will be more popular.
  
These reasons are all misguided and usually lead to painful consequences.
  
It’s time to value virtue for what it really is - STRENGTH.
  
The purpose of sport should be to teach our youth virtue.  This purpose needs to be made primary and not some secondary consequence or byproduct. Most coaches will tell you right away about all the side benefits of sports. But, why are these spiritual lessons always talked about like the second rate stepchild?  Why can’t the life lessons learned in sports be the primary objective?  Let’s reverse the roles and make things like ”having fun” and “staying in shape” the secondary byproducts of sports, with teaching virtue as our main objective.
  
The new prioritized purpose of sport:

*To use all youth sports activities primarily as a context to teach virtue:
*To teach our youth about virtuous concepts such as humility, faith, hope, love, courage, discipline, leadership, work ethic, empathy, thankfulness, and more.
*To teach our youth that just like training is essential for competition, so is doing schoolwork necessary to acquire knowledge needed in their future work or professional duties.
*To teach our youth about the need to surpass known physical capacities in order to obtain victory, as a life lesson about total devotion to the task undertaken.
*To teach our youth about continuing to compete when exhausted, as a life lesson about not getting discouraged in the pursuit of objectives in every day life.
*To teach our youth the importance of sacrificing personal interest for that of the team.
*To teach our youth about uniting wills for a common purpose which forms the attitude of solidarity, so badly needed in today’s individualistic, self centered life of consumerism.
*To teach our youth through friendly competition, a more brotherly vision in life as we exchange differing ideas with fellow man.
              
Finally, that our youth come to understand that lessons learned about virtue are the most important     motivation in athletic contests, with victory only a by-product that should not create foolish pride, and defeat a reality of life that should not breed discouragement.  We need to teach our kids in sport that just like in life,  victory and defeat are both “impostors” and that reality lies somewhere between both.
              
While there are a number of physical, psychological, and social benefits that can be gained from youth sports participation, using sports to teach virtue will have the greatest redemptive impact on our society as a whole.   However, virtue learning benefits through youth sports will not be guaranteed solely by agreement with the concept. Deliberate constructive programs need to be put in place and utilized to teach virtue through sports.  Coaches, the responsibility to teach virtue through sport is too great to leave up to chance. Don’t  the  assistant coaches, players, and parents in your program deserve the very best?  Evidence indicates that the relevance, depth and quality of a “virtue coaching program” is the key factor in maximizing positive effects.

Which “virtue coaching” curriculum are you using in your program?

     We are using Sports Leader.
     God Bless.

Conquering an Addiction

By Kevin Larkin

Head Basketball Coach, Kentucky

Coaches,

We read  about many examples of Virtuous men; from the SportsLeader playbook to stories we read about in the news that are usually at the extreme edge of doing good works.  How many times have you looked at your own life and found examples to use?  We are all good at pointing out short comings of skills , habits, etc among our players, can you look at your own life and do the same?  Have you thought about sharing your commitment as an example?

At the beginning of the 2009-10 basketball season I placed an order for new commitment cards, included was black wristbands to use with my players.  The idea was if they follow through on a commitment they make, they earn a wristband.  In addition to the verbal reward from coaches here is something small and tangible to remind them of the commitment they made to themselves, their friends and family and their coach.  If someone asked if you earned one, what would you say?

I start out slow with each team, talking about something small they need to do better in their life.  As you can imagine, 12 & 13 year old young men will start off about as small as they can.  When they capture the concept of virtue we start to move onto bigger items.   As I read through some of the initial stories I remembered they were dramatic but very powerful in getting the point across.    As I read more I thought, these are great but none of them can be told with the enthusiasm and determination that you could if it was YOUR story.   What did YOU overcome to become a better man?  Are you willing to look in the mirror and say “ I need to do better at this”.  I had that opportunity.

On October 23, 2009 I started a journey that was one of the most difficult I had ever encountered, and my living virtuously helped immensely.  After 23 years I was ready to admit I was addicted to nicotine through the use of smokeless tobacco.  I had just stopped, no step down, just cold turkey.  

What could I do to remind myself of the commitment I made to not use.  That same day I put the black SportsLeader band on to remind me of the commitment I was making.  I used a website that required me to give my word to people each day that no matter what, I would not use nicotine in any form.  I used the SportsLeader principles and the band, be a man of virtue, and sometimes that requires you to admit you need to be better.  

On day 56 I made a choice to share this with my players.  They had assumed that since I used the program that I just wore it to wear it.  I told them that I had to earn mine just like they earned theirs, I had to honor the word I gave every day, to admit I was an  addict but to make a promise I would not use nicotine that day.  What I wanted them to hear was, you have to earn that band everyday by living a virtuous life.  

The players asked me throughout the rest of the season what day was I on.  It is an amazing feeling to this day to know I could share my story which can be told with so much more of your soul, but you have to be willing to look in the mirror and ask what in my life is not living like a man of virtue?  We can talk the life, can we live the life of the Virtuous Man and admit when we aren’t?

Here is a video link of Coach Paul Passafiume talking about what it means to truly be a man:

http://sportsleaderusa.blogspot.com/2009/10/paul-passafiume-what-is-man.html

Athletics and Academics

By: Steve Frommeyer, Principal & Head Football Coach, Eminence High School, Eminence, KY. 

Have you ever thought about why there is such a deep divide between the academic and athletic worlds in America? Still today, many people see the relationship between the two worlds as “shaky” at best. As a principal and head football coach for over 20 years, I have been in a somewhat unique position to have to negotiate those two worlds on a daily basis. The academic world claims that there is too much emphasis on sports at the expense of academics. The athletic world often exhibits a win at all cost attitude that further alienates itself from many educators and community members.

However, educators (and often those same community members), often fail to see all the tremendous qualities athletes develop by participating in competitive situations. Moreover, statistics show that kids in athletics actually make higher grades than the general student population as a whole. Thus, the divide.

At Eminence Middle School/High School, our mission statement is “to develop world class students in all aspects of life through the cooperation of all stakeholders”. We view athletics and other extracurricular activities as a vital part of our school curriculum. These activities can help develop world class students in areas that the classroom alone could never possibly do. We require every student to participate in at least one school activity per year (average) in order to be promoted and/or graduate.

Programs like Sportsleader help break down that divide between these two often conflicting worlds. Students of character are much more likely to be successful in both the academic and athletic worlds. If more schools would take a more “holistic” approach to the education of our students and more teams would include programs like Sportsleader in their daily routines, the two worlds as separate entities would not exist. We would reach the goal Jesus set before us to become as “one”!

Football Gear for American Samoa

Remember that 60 Minutes show on American Samoa? If not click on the link to watch a short video  

http://sportsleaderusa.blogspot.com/2010/01/american-samoa-football-island.html

Kennedy High School Offensive Coordinator Jeff Seiler saw the 60 Minutes show on American Samoa and football. He was "inspired". He called American Samoa, got a hold of the right people, and as we speak, we have rallied several of our SportsLeader type coaches out here in Oregon and are putting together a shipment of surplus football gear to send to them FREE. I thought there would be hundreds of people contacting them to help, but the gal that Jeff talked to said there were only a few responses. Wow! One of a few responses, from little ole Mt. Angel, Oregon population 3,200 ???? You have got to be kidding me. Praise God!
Coach Traeger  

We are sending: 
(40) Helmets 
(50) Shoulder Pads 
(60) Girdle Pad sets 
(110) Game Jerseys 
(150) Practice Jerseys 
(75) Pants (50) Misc Pads ... Assorted knee braces, collars, belts,chin straps, etc.  

We had Four other teams contribute with us. 

Coach John Beck at Crater High School, Central Point, OR 
Coach Steve Turner at Mountain View High School, Bend, OR 
Coach Tony Smith at St. Paul High School, St. Paul, OR 
Coach Bill Smith at Century High School, Hillsboro, OR  

These of course are used, but a new helmet costs $140.00, new shoulder pads $150.00, a girdle $24.00, a game jersey $39.00, practice jerseys $20.00, pants $27.00, assorted pads $15.00 each. helmets - $5,600 shoulder pads - $7,500 assorted pads - $1,650 game jerseys - $4,290 practice jerseys - $3,000 pants - $2,025  

Total - $24,065 if bought new. Let's say everything was half-off - still that is $12,032 worth of stuff

Coach leads students on mission trip to Haiti

Richard Essex/Eyewitness News

Lebanon - There are football coaches, and then there are coaches who teach more than football. Kent Wright, the head football coach at Lebanon High School, is leading about half of his varsity team into a disaster area for a lesson for life.

"I decided a long time ago when I became a head football coach, state championships don't come around too often, my idea was to create experiences for kids that are going to last a lifetime," said Coach Kent Wright.

Several members of his football team have signed up for a week of heavy lifting in Haiti. His team is used to tough workouts, but this is the kind of experience that the coach hopes will change his athletes spiritually.

"It is going to be miserable but the way I look at it, we are helping someone and it is truly getting us to see how lucky we are," said Chad Hale, student.

They will travel to a remote village in Haiti to tear down houses with the intention of rebuilding eight houses in two weeks. Rebuilding the homes will mean carrying every piece and every tool through rough terrain.

"I think it will be a trip of a lifetime. Coach has been telling us that a lot - how this is really going to change our lives," said Joe Lane, student.

This is not the first time that Coach Wright has taken a group to a disaster area. Right after Hurricane Katrina he and several members of the Lebanon Christian Church went to New Orleans. This trip to Haiti, according to his players, is just part of this game plan.

"We tell them up front, this is a mission trip. You will hear some religion," said the coach.

Coach Wright does not hide from his faith, nor does he push it. But he does use it to teach lessons.

"With him he has always taught me there are gonna be things in life that you don't want to do and this is one of those things," said Hale.

The players will hold a number of fundraisers to defer part of the $1,000 cost. Each person going is expected to pay $300 and help raise the rest.

Coach Wedding Renewal should be every night!

Sunday night, March 28^th, 2010 was a great night!  Several SportsLeader coaches and their wives met for dinner to celebrate a hard-fought season.  But the purpose was greater than that……it was to celebrate the wives; celebrate the devotion and support coaches’ wives give to their men during long and difficult seasons.  Thus the program consisted of more than dinner and dessert, it included a talk on marriage, a personal public thank you to our wives and a renewal of wedding vows.  It was just what the doctor ordered!  Every coach needs to do this, to celebrate their marriage and their wife….for our own sake but more importantly, for our beautiful and often times neglected wives.

Tuesday night, March 30^th, 2010 was a terrible night!  The happiest couple in the world (me and my wife!) had just had a tremendous fight.  (Me) “Why do you want me around all the time but then we start fights when we are together?”  (Her) “You really don’t want to be here, you would rather be with your athletes or with other coaches!”  Back and forth we  went, both of us convinced we were right, convinced that our significant other didn’t care about anybody else but themselves. We were not one in marriage, in fact, we couldn’t get as far away as possible from each other, fast enough!

Does this story sound familiar?  Things are going great, you and your wife are connecting, you’re working together, you are so in love with your wife.  Then……WHAM!.......you’re wondering why you got married in the first place.  Your life would be so much easier if you had just stayed single, plenty of money, plenty of freedom and plenty of time to coach: 24/7/365 days a year.  As I sat in a quiet place, I asked God to help me.  How does this happen?  Why does my wife not understand?  God had an answer for me, but it wasn’t why my wife doesn’t understand, it was why I don’t understand my wife.

Men, many of your wives married you because you were a stud. (I hope you still are, and I am sure you still are…..I am…at least I think I am. HA!)  You were a stud and you swept her off her feet.  As Father Matthew said in his talk Sunday night, we were our wives’ heroes, the knight in shining armor.  I remember when courting my wife, I left a football clinic, having a great time with other coaches at the after-clinic social, drove 2 hours to see HER.  Football was not my life, and if it was, it paled in comparison to her.  She is what I thought about constantly, not drawing up plays.  I spent all my spare time with her, not watching game film.  I talked to her about us and not about what next season was going to be like.  My life was about her…..and I loved every second of it.

So many of our wives are dying, men.  Just look at the latest divorce statistics among coaches.  Coaches’ wives are neglected.  Coaches’ wives are abandoned.  Coaches’ wives are taken for granted.  Coaches’ wives are wounded.  Coaches’ wives are bitter. And this is because we care more about winning than about them.  We care more about somebody else’s kids than about them.  We love a game played by teenage boys more than we love them.

I want my wrestlers to win, men.  I want to have a championship wrestling team. And God be praised, we will have championship wrestlers and a championship team. But I also want my boys to become championship men. And championship men do the right thing.  Championship husbands love their wives.  They cherish them in private and in public.  They include them in all their hopes and dreams.  They put them first.  Thank God, my wife reminded me of that because celebrating your wife should not be regulated to one day of the year in March after a hard season, it should be a daily celebration that you practice every day of the year. I’m going to start working on THAT championship today.  I encourage you to do the same.

God Bless and Enjoy the Fight!

Chris Willertz

Winton Woods Wrestling-where we separate the men from the boys!

“Our mission is to train warrior boys into championship wrestlers and championship men!”

That simple but profound joy in life and sports

To: The Sportsleader Family

From: Steve Frommeyer, Principal and Head Football Coach Eminence High School - Eminence, KY

First, I would like to thank Lou Judd for giving me the opportunity to share some thoughts with the Sportsleader Family on a regular basis. SportsLeader and Lou have both been a tremendous asset to our program, myself personally, and most importantly to our players.

As Spring (really Winter) practice finished this past week, it gave me time to reflect again on our priorities. Being a very small school with many of our players in baseball or other activities, we only had 12 players at practice each day. As a competitive coach, my first instinct is to get frustrated with all the things we were not able to get done. However, I remembered a story about (basketball game) Jim Valvano’s father. He would ask his sons after every practice or game two simple questions: 1) Did you learn anything? and 2) Did you have fun? It was his yardstick for success.

Using that measure, we had a very successful Spring practice. With small numbers, our players were able to get individual attention and thus learned a lot of football and also got to deepen their personal relationships with the coaches and each other. Moreover, they had fun. We had some beautiful days and we tried hard to make the drills helpful but also fun to do. The reality is most boys love to compete, and we tried to build off that fact with our practice routines.

Finally, I had to remind myself that God says we cannot enter the Kingdom of God unless we again become child-like in our trust of him and our unconditional love for his people. The sheer joy of “playing” and sharing with each other and trusting that God will use our efforts for his glory is at the core of what sports and life are all about!

I hope none of you ever lose that simple but profound joy in life and sports!

Coaches Wedding Renewal

Over the weekend my wife and I had the opportunity to attend one of the most inspiring SportsLeader events ever - The Coaches Marriage Renewal. It was beautiful to be able to attend something with my wife. 

We were 7 couples, 1 Priest and 1 young man who is giving a year as a volunteer. 5 couples were from the Covington (KY) Catholic High School football program, 1 from Cincinnati Winton Woods Wrestling and us.

I cannot encourage you all to organize something like this for you and your program strongly enough. You NEED to do this!

We had out event at The Montgomery Inn - which is a famous Cincinnati restaurant known for ribs ... Our schedule was as follows:

6:00 Social

6:25 Order food and sit
6:30 Father Matthew give talk about beauty of marriage and how much we should appreciate our wives
7:00 Eat dinner
7:45 Each coach stands to affirm his wife, tell her how much he appreciates her, that he loves her and give her a rose
8:15 Renewal of vows/ Exchange of rings
8:25 Wedding Cake

One wife's email sums it all up:

THANK YOU for getting these pictures out and for organizing the entire evening.  It was simply beautiful!  I am very grateful and have a renewed sense of thanksgiving for the awesome man God made just for me - thanks again!

If you need help with this just let me know. We have the renewal format and everything ready for you.

If you would like to listen to most of Father Matthew's awesome talk, it is here. Maybe you and your wife can listen to this together.

http://sportsleaderusa.blogspot.com/2010/03/coaches-wedding-renewal-father-matthew.html

Coaches Wedding Renewal Father Matthew Talk

Speak it into Existence

By Randy Traeger

Head Football Coach Oregon

Speak it into Existence

I had been coaching about 10 years and our teams had had moderate success.  We were average, ever looking for the secret formula that would propel our program to the next level. 

A state contender.

Then one day, it dawned on us. While we all were harboring secret thoughts of playing for a state championship, we never ever expressed that verbally. We never “spoke the words”.  So the next day, we started “speaking the words”.  We said, “Let’s win a state championship”.  The coaches said it, the players said it, and managers said it. Pretty soon, the teachers, parents, and even our fans starting talking about winning a state championship.  Nothing was really different other than the fact that we starting talking about winning a state championship. Two years later, we played for the state championship. We literally had spoken it into existence.

What had happened reinforced the school of thought that some things can be “spoken into existence”.  For instance, if you tell a player that they are fast, you help them become fast.  If you tell them they are intelligent, you help them get better grades.  

Speak “virtuous behavior” into existence on your team. Say the words. 

Tell your players all the things you want them to be: courageous, loyal, faithful, perseverant, honest, strong, noble, compassionate, intelligent, kind.  Tell them to be men of virtue.  Tell them what virtue is.  You would be surprised at how many of your players are simply unfamiliar with many virtuous concepts.  Our society has filled their heads with facts, but failed to fill their hearts with virtue. Teach them about virtue. If you constantly remind them of virtuous qualities, you help instill virtue in their hearts.  When your players exhibit virtuous behaviors, be sure to publicly praise them. Make a big deal out of even the smallest act of virtue.  

Young men have a way of becoming what we encourage them to be. 

Looking for a good place to start coaching virtue in your program? 

“Speak it into existence”.

     

God Bless