How to Implement an Improved Team Culture
A few years back I knew that our program needed to take a step forward beyond workouts to become something truly special. With the help of my coaches and team captains we can up with a number of ideas to improve the sisterhood on the team.
Big Sister Little Sister Program
Team Theme Days
This idea we stole from Jim Lohr out at MICDS during his part of "More than the workouts" lecture a few years back. The morning before most track meets the girls will dress up a number goofy ways to celebrate the coming day's track and field meet. Always meant to be fun and never hazing the kids. Our "go to" team themes are "dress nice and tennis shoes, pride & pig tails, and twins." When other kids in the school see our kids dressed in a unique way our athletes get a chance to let their classmates know about the upcoming day of competition. Dress nice and tennis shoes was developed to keep the kids from wearing outrageously dangerous stiletto shoes or sandals that do more to harm young people's feet and ankles. Pride and pig tails is a fun way to dress up in school colors, face paint, ribbons, etc. Twins is an obvious dress up day where the big sister and little sister dress up the same. If the girls do not have a little sister then they team up with a pair of girls to form a triplet group. The girls decided "twins day" was a nice way to honor my wife who lost two of our triplet babies in a difficult pregnancy. Two of our daughters didn't make it to this world and past in utero but that doesn't mean that their life or anyone else's who last a child to miscarriage should be diminished. The kids tend to even do this team theme on the infertility week. To say there were very few dry eyes that day would be the grandest of understatement. Kids will surprise you in unique ways. As heavy and sad as this may seem it allows me to share my wife's and my story along with celebrating the miracle that is our child Isabelle who did make it. The message I try and share with the kids is life can be tough but with faith and love of a friend even the most difficult things in life can be overcome.
Team Breakfasts
Team Breakfasts we tend to do on the morning of a track meet. It is hard to control what happens the 21 to 22 hours your athletes are away from you but by providing a team breakfast you can give a kid a chance to have at least one healthy meal the day of their event. I always have our kids meet in my room it allows me to touch base with all them that morning for special instructions, injury issues, event changes, etc. The kids are responsible for bringing the snacks, plastic items, and drinks. Each week we choose a different group of kids that bring the goodies for us to eat meet day. While we are snacking I play an Olympic or World Championship track meet highlight reel on my overhead projectors. It's fun and gets the kids inspired. Once we get a large enough number of athletes we try to take a group picture to post on social media.
Reward System- All World List, PR Bar, and Interval Cards
Pundits have become critical of rewarding kids for fulfilling the most basic expectations. On the other side of the spectrum old school coaches rarely give their athletes a complement let alone a trophy or prize. Even the grandmaster of sport psychology says athletes should find intrinsic motivation and extrinsic rewards do not create the type of motivated athlete we are looking for long term. Personally, throughout the year I do like to do small things for athletes of different abilities to help keep them motivated. It creates a lot of small moments of positive energy that can be contagious to the rest of the team. Kids also become more aware of their progress.
When I first started coaching it was crucial for me to uncover as much of the girl's track and field history I could find. My goal was to create an accurate top ten list for our record book. Fifteen years ago https://mo.milesplit.com had yet to come online and in the St. Louis our database of sports stats was slim. Thankfully, the few years before I started coaching the leadership before me kept great records but as I worked back to the mid-1990s I had no clue what former athletes ran, jumped, or threw in the regular season. I even went so far to enter the MSHSAA vault to look at the old state media guide searching for Parkway Central state qualifiers. Sadly, that only turned up a hand full of athletes. At this point I knew my historic top ten list would always be incomplete. At this point I decided to go in another direction with what I dubbed the "All World List."
All World List
The All World List would be different then a top ten. Instead of adding names to an increasingly difficult top ten list I decided to go with a standard based numbers and distances for an athlete to place their name in Central's track history books. For example in the 200 dash you have to run under 28.00 seconds to get you name added to the All World List. Now the trick to these All World Lists is they need to be quality enough of a performance that most of your team cannot hit those numbers without some talent or work. However, on the other hand they need to be attainable enough to be early motivation for some athletes entering into your program. It is always fun after a major track and field meet to add names to the list. I have told my athletes many times it is my hope these lists will become so large our yearly track and field media guide will become hundreds of pages long. I always let the kids know when they have gotten on the list and where they currently rank in school history. It is so much fun to see the kids climb up the list over their career.
PR Bar
After reading Coach Guthrie's book from his tenure at UW-Lacrosse I decided to implement the Personal Record (PR) Bar reward system. Any time an athlete gets a personal record (PR) they earn a candy bar. Usually, every couple of meets we buy bags of individual wrapped candy bars to reward dozens of new personal bests. I like the idea of the PR bar because even the slowest or least talented kid on the team will get many personal bests throughout the season. Additionally, by giving the kids a candy bar once in a while you send the message it is ok to enjoy sweets or treats. I always tell my kids "it does not matter what the scale says instead it's about how you look and feeling in your clothing." We hand out the bars near the beginning of practice during our team huddle. We have all the athletes who hit a PR at the previous meet to stand and be recognized. Once everyone who should be standing is on their feet we go around from left to right and have the athletes tell us how many PRs they got along the mark they hit in the event. Each PR gets a "Colt Clap." A Colt clap is one loud unified Clap for all the kids to do simultaneously. The single clap makes going through all the PRs recognitions quick limiting time wasted if you have a long training session the day you recognized an athlete's career best.
Interval Card
The interval card was an idea I developed watching Willy Wonka on TV and the character who got the "Golden Ticket." The interval card is another reward given out to an athlete who has done something truly special in a practice or a meet. Once awarded an interval card an athlete can use the ticket in any other workout throughout the rest of the track season to sit out an interval. It's amazing how much harder a sprinter will work to have the chance at getting out of an interval at some other point in the regular season. Having the option to sit out an interval can be useful when a kid needs a break and doesn't have to feel guilty for asking out because they won the option to sit out a repetition. However, what is really humorous is as the season progresses some of the athletes guilty using the card in the practice and often this leads to an entire season without ever cashing in the ticket. Now to use this reward effectively particular rules must be followed or the interval card could be abused.
Never the longest interval- it is my policy to never allow the sprinters to use the card on the longest interval in practice. Speed endurance is an important component to what makes us successful on the track. I also like to send the message all the kids in our program do the longer and tougher intervals when scheduled.
Only can use one per practice- there are key workouts that I like to do in the middle or late part of the season. I don't want to my athletes to hoard these cards to miss an entire practice. A complete absence from practice can disrupt our training plan.
If an unexcused absence happens the card cannot be used in practice for a week- If an athlete misses a practice and that practice is unexcused then the sprinter cannot use the card for a week. They don't lose the card just the right to use it for a week.
Social Media/Alumni
Secret Track Buddy
Secret track buddy is a game of "Secret Santa" during the track season. I take the team roster put everyone's name in hat. Once the game is started the secret buddies have a week and half to do three sweet things for their buddy. These things do not need to cost money and can range from a personal poem to a gift card to St. Louis BreadCo. Usually, we try and make the secret track buddy reveal the day of the track meet given the kids a chance to hand off their last gift at our team breakfast or before our warm up for the evenings track meet even better when it is a home meet.
Recruiting
First, you need to create communication between the high school and middle school programs/PE departments.
You can do this in a number of ways like a bulletin board highlighting your team's accomplishments in the middle school. Our middle school physical education program does a track and field unit. During this unit they record each performance and reward the kids who have the top performances in each class. Every year I get this list from the PE department and target the kids who I believe can help us. In addition to the PE numbers each year the middle school has an intramural track and field meet between the other middle schools in our school district. Each year I go to this meet so I can see a number of these kids in action.
Second, have a teacher on your staff in the middle school.
This is not always easy to do since the middle school usually has a different daily class schedule that conflicts with practice time. But if you can sacrifice having them at the beginning or at the end of practice they can be really useful in building relationships, spreading the word, and opening the door to the possibility of running track in the future.
Third, get the word out about your program.
Every year I send each of the 300 plus freshman a letter highlighting the accomplishments the program has achieved over the years. Also in this letter, I mention all of the other benefits our sport provides young people like goal setting, fitness, improving their main sport, and participation. As we all know there is no bench in high school track and field. For a number of the best prospects in the high school I write them a personal letter discussing how much they could help our program. I make sure this is sent to the parents of the athlete. I also bold face the personal part of the letter. This is a little trick that creates an opportunity for the parents and the kids to have a positive conversation about our sport and a nice letter complementing them.
Fourth, a team informational meeting and posting fliers before the season starts.
The informational meeting is best to have after the letters have been written. I like to send the letters out about month and half before the season starts. Then I like to have the meeting a month out from the start of the season. Here we talk about team expectations, rules, and get a lot of the paperwork done for our athletic director. Finally, after this we will put up fliers with pictures of our track and field athletes in action. These fliers also include important information like the start time of our season. Spreading out the above mentioned events will help you stay in the kids thoughts and at the same time not become a wall of noise
Fifth, have an off season conditioning program.
I know that each state has different rules on how many days and what things you can do during conditioning. We are lucky in Missouri because the rules allow us to get our kids into shape. This program should be open to everyone and any sport. If done correctly this program will prepare your kids for success and will help you pull in new athletes who enjoy the time you spend with them so much they will likely end up on your team in the spring! The time spent in the off season can dwarf the time spent coaching in the regular season. The time commitment can be intimidating but in the end it is well worth the time and effort. In future blogs I will discuss how these programs can be successful.
Last, if all else fails personally go introduce yourself to a talented kid, shake their hand (VERY IMPORTANT), and look them in the eye then tell them how much you would enjoy the chance to coach them!
Promoting program
Kids Spell Love T.I.M.E. - Winter Conditioning and Summer Track
In a recent interview with Hazelwood West's
boys Coach Phil Wollbrink he had a great quote "Kids spell love T.I.M.E." The more
time you give the more the kids will give back to you. Attitude reflects
leadership and if you want your kids to commit 100% you can't give 50%. This
means being there on cold winter days and hot summer months. You have to ride
the bus. Be the first person to the track and the last one to leave. Even when
you feel ill you show up, as long as you're not contagious. Athletes need to
train all your round to be great. This doesn't mean you need to blast the kid's
legs out all year long. Each season should have a different point of emphasis
to build toward the important championship phases of indoors, outdoors, and
cross country season. For more on this please watch my previous interview with
Parkway West's Coach John, Lafayette's Coach O'Connor, and Hazelwood West's
Coach Wollbrink.