More Important Than The X's and O's - Helping Develop Kids Into Adults With Integrity
We all really like seeing our players improve and winning games. However, there are things more important than the x's and o's like helping to develop players into adults with integrity.
Here area a couple of emails that I sent to my team to help teach the importance of hard work, attitude, and helping others. Go ahead and use the emails with your own team if you like it.
Email # 1 - Quiet Confidence, Hard Work, and Attitude
Hey Guys,
Watch this video and then respond to these questions (all players need to reply)...
This video is about baseball but it applies to our basketball team and all sports. TCU Baseball - Quiet Confidence:
On a scale of 0-10 (with 0 being lowest and 10 highest), how much did you like this video? Be honest.
What did you like about it? What appealed most to you?
Which of our "team core values" did this video talk about? List them here.
Coach Haefner
Email # 2 - Helping Others
Guys -
One of our core values it to help others. We can of course do better, but we usually do a pretty good job helping each other in practice and in games. We also should help others outside of basketball...
I would like our team to do something to help someone/something outside of this team. What ideas do you have to help others and do something positive?
There are no bad ideas. Take some time to think about something we can do as a team. Everyone needs to respond with ideas. Once we collect all the ideas, we'll decide as a team what we want to do.
"You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you." - John Wooden.
Thanks.
Coach Haefner
The Results
Both emails received a nice response from our players. For the first email, most of them said they liked the video -- they gave it an average rating of "8". Our players also did a good job of picking out core values. I was happy with the results and the email served as just another way for us to reinforce our core values. I plan to send it again next year.
For the second email, players offered lots of good ideas to "help others". Our team ended up doing a few different things. One idea was to clean up the gym after a couple of our games. So we all stuck around after the final game and helped clean up. The custodian was ecstatic and very thankful. She directed 20 players and gave them instructions while they did all the work (cleaning up the gym, moving tables, and cleaning the commons). The gym was cleaned in record time!! The kids had fun with it, it was a good team bonding experience, and I think they felt good about helping out.
Feel free to use these emails with your own team. And if you have any ideas that have worked well for you, please share them below!
What do you think? Let us know by leaving your comments, suggestions, and questions...
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