Team Rules & Structure

At the beginning of every season coaches lay out their own goals, style of play, rules, norms, ideas and many other items. I put anything that coaches do to "set-up" their own team under the blanket of "Team Structure". This idea of how a team is structured in my opinion goes along way in to how successful a team can/will be. Team structure goes in many different directions and how a coach handles different instances ultimately sets up how a team functions.

Each team structure is built in a different way. I can almost guarantee how I handle one years team will differ from how I will handle the following year. I keep my own set of rules pretty straight forward:

  1. Show up on time
  2. Care while you are on the field
  3. Have respect both on/off of the field. 
There is zero tolerance for any kind of "knucklehead" who might be on his own plan. As a coach I can say that I want to help build a students character through sports but ultimately if they are consistently acting up both on and off of the field a decision needs to be made.

I ran into this situation this past season. A player began to show up when they wanted, played when they wanted, was disrespectful in school, and even worse didn't care on the field. After a week on thinking about what to do I knew that a definitive decision needed to be made. After speaking with some people I decided to talk to the player and give it another go. Later that day the player skipped practiced, reinforcing my idea of having zero tolerance when it comes to these types of situations.

I know that if this situation popped up again I would have definitely handled it in a different way. I have noticed that each team I coach I try to stay consistent with everything that I do improving along the way. I have though that every team is built differently which makes the norms of each team different. Which makes the rules of each team different, which makes the way that I coach them different.

Coaching is about finding what works which each team. You can not just say "This is how I do everything! Conform to me." as a coach you must find what works for your team of work to meet their abilities. This is an important realization for a coach to make because often times especially in high school and college sports you will not have rapid turn over from one year to the next.

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