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CHAPTER 1

THE COACH’S POTENTIAL

I imagine a world where the greatest harvest of the 21st century will be the harvest of human potential.

THE NFL DRAFT

Once a year, usually around the end of April, millions of people gather around their televisions, tablets, and cell phones to devour the NFL draft. Months of research, millions of dollars, and countless hours of study and analysis go into evaluating and rating a few thousand college football players in their early 20s. What is being evaluated? Human potential. Specifically, the potential to play football at the professional level. Why is it so important? Why is so much time and money invested? Because the decision of which young man a front office picks to play for its football team is the difference between winning and losing. It may be the difference in a coach’s or general manager’s career.

Why is our culture so fascinated in watching a broadcast of television personalities discussing why or where a player should be drafted? Why are football fanatics so infatuated that they pore over draft grades on scouting and news websites? Because in our society we are constantly evaluating and putting grades on people’s value and potential. We watch the NFL draft and cheer or boo our team’s draft picks based on whether we believe the team got value in its pick. If Tom Brady had been drafted in the first round, the fans would have booed because no team believed he had that type of potential. In the late rounds, no one cared. The challenge with evaluating human potential is that none of us can predict the future. The person with the best idea of what a player may become is inside that player. The rest of us are reduced to trying to predict a player’s future based upon past performances. The challenge with trying to predict the potential of Tom Brady was that he wasn’t even a full-time starter at the University of Michigan. The majority of people thought Michigan’s other quarterback, Drew Henson, had more potential. Brady’s coach at Michigan didn’t seem to be fully confident in Brady’s ability. When analyzing Tom Brady through those circumstances, it would have been hard for anyone to believe he would ever win six Super Bowls, but two short years later, he quarterbacked the New England Patriots in his first Super Bowl win.

As coaches, the majority of the time we have to make decisions based on current and recent performances. We can tend to overvalue great performances and overvalue poor performances. What do I mean? If a player first has a great performance in our presence, then we tend to remember that great performance, and we grade the potential of that player based on that great performance. Rightly or wrongly, we may invest more in that player when he or she struggles because we believe the player can perform better and has a higher potential, based on witnessing a great performance. Conversely, if we first witness a poor performance by a player, we may now evaluate that player’s future potential based on that first performance. We are later surprised if the player performs better. None of us can predict the future. Especially when it comes to people. We can make highly informed guesstimations, but we can’t put a lid on a person’s potential. There are too many variables and too much time and opportunities for people to know where they will end up.

This is why the GET MOR3EE formula is such a good resource for coaches. It helps us to manage our own tendencies to rate players on past performances and to continue to build and invest into all the players under our charge regardless of how we perceive their physical performances. We have the challenge of managing the short-term results of our teams with the long-term development of the individuals. The GET MOR3EE formula is our guide for accomplishing both challenges as coaches. It’s the formula for empowering our players and maximizing their potential.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” (Attributed to Henry S. Haskins)

WHAT IS POTENTIAL?

How can we know if a person or team has maximized their potential? I think it’s important to put a timeframe on that question. “Potential” by definition is an ability or capacity to be or develop into something in the future. Our potential abilities in a year are different than what they may be in five years. With sports, I think it’s simple. How do we know if we’ve maximized our potential as individual athletes and as a team by the end of a season? I think there are two parts to the answer. One: when players can unabashedly tell me they’ve given every last drop of commitment, effort, and focus to fulfill their potential in this area and put their potential into action. And two: when I as their coach confirm that to be true. Then I can say that a player has maximized his or her potential in that moment.

It’s one thing to reach your potential. It’s another thing to fulfill your potential and another to maximize your potential.

Reaching your potential is a discovery process. It requires learning and growing. You’ve arrived at your potential. You’ve discovered a talent and seen a glimpse of what you could do with that talent. There is a spark.

Fulfilling your potential requires aligning your potential talent with a purpose. Your purpose can be as simple as a goal you set for the season. The thought of your talent and purpose together brings you joy and excitement. It brings you focus and clarity. There is energy. There is motivation. Maximizing your potential requires putting your talent and purpose into action. Maximizing your potential enlarges the influence of your talent and purpose. There is movement. There is momentum.

I believe it to be an honor and a responsibility as a coach to help players discover, fulfill, and maximize their talents and potential.

How do you know if a kid has more potential? They’re breathing.

“Much of leadership is about extracting the extra 5 per cent of performance that individuals did not know they possessed.” (Sir Alex Ferguson)1

GET MOR3EE’S RELEVANCE AND OPPORTUNITY IN TODAY’S COACHING ENVIRONMENT

I am a coach, and I grew up as the grandson of a hall of fame coach who left an echoing legacy. The most influential people in my life have all been coaches. The foundation of many of the ideas and observations of GET MOR3EE came from observing and studying coaches and teams in competition over a season or seasons—much of it at the youth level.

We now face the challenge of a technological society where technology has both brought us closer together and at the same time drawn us farther apart. We have the ability to communicate more easily than ever before, but we struggle to keep the focus of our youth with so many things competing for their attention. How do we help them stay on task when it’s so easy to move on to the next thing when they face adversity? How do we still challenge them to strive for a goal and achieve more than they maybe thought possible?

In a world where social media influencers are all the rage, have we forgotten about the most powerful influencer in a person’s life? The coach. The coach is still one of the greatest influencers and most impactful people in an adolescent’s life. The coach has the opportunity to have the undivided attention of a youth for an hour or two at a time, several times a week, and without the distractions of tablets and technology. Their parents may not even get that much connected time.

It has become obvious to me that I must share my leadership and coaching philosophy on how to grow and develop the people in your charge and get more out of them. Coaches are attracted to the easy-to-apply formula for motivating their players to achieve more. We need to be able to inspire and equip coaches to coach the person and not just the player. We need to empower athletes to increase the positivity in their environment and eliminate the “trash” talk that has become so prevalent and accepted in our youth athletics today. An appropriate proverb from the wisest man that ever lived is “Good people bless and build up their city, but the wicked can destroy it with their words” (Prov. 11:11 NCV).

MY FOCUS

My focus has never been on winning every game. My heart has always been on winning with every player. That doesn’t mean getting them to like me. My role is not to be their friend, but I can be friendly. My role is to be their coach. A teacher, leader, mentor, and cheerleader all rolled into one. My number one responsibility is to motivate the players to succeed at whatever we define success to be—to be one of their biggest cheerleaders and supporters, while also holding them accountable to themselves and the team. How you do that depends on you as the coach and where you’re going, but I have a formula you can follow that’s helped me in guiding teams in countless winning seasons and countless winning people. I developed the formula by observing my grandfather, a hall of fame coach, and observing and studying other successful and unsuccessful coaches and leaders.

Most recently, I implemented the formula over the past three years with the varsity boys’ soccer team at The Kings Academy. When I took over in 2016, we started our rise by defeating two teams in our district that we never beat in the history of our school. The two coaches both approached me afterwards to congratulate me—not necessarily on the win but on how different the team looked, how confident and motivated the boys seemed compared to previous years. We made it to the district final, and one of those coaches, whose team we beat again in the playoffs, told me he was voting for me for Coach of the Year.

I was not selected as Coach of the Year that year, but I thought it was cool that other coaches validated the work we were doing in a year when we didn’t win the championship. The following season of 2017, we were in the district final again, only losing one district game all season to the team that eventually won the state championship. In the 2018/19 season we started the season 2–7–1, but I just knew we were going to win the district. I kept instilling that belief in the boys, even when at our lowest. We finished the season on a 6–0 run through the playoffs, conceding just one goal. Our team defeated the reigning state champions, finally winning the district championship in 2019 for only the third time in school history. We then advanced through the first round of the regional playoffs for only the second time in school history. I was voted Coach of the Year in 2019 after winning the district championship, which was satisfying, and I was appreciative of all the coaches who voted for me.

I walked into a team of high school boys with very few full-time soccer players, who were struggling to compete in the conference and low on confidence. Transforming them into a group that believed they could compete successfully, reaching the district finals all three seasons, and winning the district championship in 2019 didn’t occur by happenstance. I was purposeful in following the GET MOR3EE formula. My goal was to get to the district championship every season.

I started with a bold vision of getting to the last game, the state championship. Then I focused on developing the players. We can’t be certain of what the ultimate outcome will be at the end of the season. We focus on getting more out of each player. My ultimate goal and measure of success is whether I am able to get the most out of every player. Maybe, maybe not, because I believe there is more yet to come, but maybe we did in that season. The success is that we got more out of some of our players than some of them imagined possible.

THE GREATEST CHALLENGE IN YOUTH SPORTS

It may be that the most significant challenge facing youth sports today is the lack of sufficiently trained athletic coaches. The Aspen Institute has studied this extensively and reports, “Coaches are the delivery mechanism for quality sport programming … They can make an athlete for life—or wreck enthusiasm for sport altogether … Trained coaches do best.”2 However, “Less than four in 10 youth coaches say they are trained in any of the following areas: sport skills and tactics, effective motivational technique, or safety needs (CPR/basic first aid and concussion management).”3

Effective motivational techniques and sports skills/tactics are the skill sets we most often associate with good coaching. According to this study, only 36 percent of coaches have received training in effective motivational techniques and 35 percent in sports skills/tactics. The Aspen Institute report provides this information:

Here is why the skill of effective motivation may be the most important in improving youth sports in America. A youth sports study on why students quit a sports team showed that 39 percent of students responded that they weren’t having fun.4 This is an alarming figure and was by far the biggest reason statistically of why students quit playing. At the core, I believe this is a function of the environment created by the coach. Following the GET MOR3EE formula equips coaches to begin building this environment.

The following is an excerpt from an April 10, 2019, Stack.com post titled “A Shocking Number of Youth Sports Coaches Are Unqualified for the Gig.”

A 2004 report from the University of Maine found that youth athletes who play for an untrained coach drop at a rate of 26% per year, while those who play for a qualified coach drop out at 5%. The NAYS states that kids and pre-teens are more likely to experience a boost in self-esteem when playing for a qualified coach as opposed to an unqualified coach. Qualified coaches know how to make practices fun, safe and age-appropriate …

According to research by the Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative, kids want coaches who:

• Respect and encourage them

• Exist as positive role models

• Offer clear, consistent communication

• Have a knowledge of the sport

• Have a willingness to listen.5

Knowledge of the sport is just one of the top five traits that players hope for in a coach. The other four are relational by nature—traits of a mentor, teacher, and coach.

“Coaches can often be more helpful to a young player’s development by organizing less, saying less, and allowing the players to do more.”6 As coaches we need to create an environment that naturally empowers and encourages players to do more. An empowered player gains the self-confidence to take initiative in doing more, which fuels their creativity, imagination, and passion and creates even greater momentum and motivation.

Youth sports is such a large demographic that no one really knows how many kids are participating annually, but I’ve seen figures estimating that somewhere between 30 to 45 million kids annually participate in organized youth sports in America alone.

If each kid participated in just one organized sport annually, then the preceding number means there will be possibly 300 to 450 million opportunities over the next decade for a coach to positively impact a child during a season of youth sports. This is a generational opportunity, but let us put aside the number of kids for a moment and focus on what may be the more important figure.

An estimated 3.5 million youth coaches in America are coaching these 30 to 45 million kids a year. That averages out to about 1 coach for every 10 kids participating in organized sports, and this number may not accurately reflect the millions of part-time parent coaches. According to the Stack.com article, the larger challenge facing youth sports is finding qualified coaches. If only 36 percent of 3.5 million coaches have training in effective motivational techniques, then roughly 2.25 million coaches have a need for a practical tool like the GET MOR3EE formula. If the NAYS estimate of only 5 to 10 percent of youth coaches having any relevant training is anywhere close to accurate, then there is a massive need to meet.

Whenever I hear a story from parents or coaches about a coach’s poor behavior or seeming lack of coaching ability, I ask them why they think that is the case. The majority of the responses include a reference to the coach as “unequipped.” Unequipped is exactly what the Alpine Group study describes. Equipping coaches is the greatest value of the GET MOR3EE formula. There is a clear need to equip coaches with a simple motivational tool to apply in coaching their players and teams. If we can do that, I think we will begin to have fewer complaints about the lack of coaching ability. If we do hear “unequipped” associated with the description of a coach’s ability to lead and motivate, then instead of being constantly frustrated, we have a way to encourage and equip more coaches, not just to be more positive but also to be empowering leaders and role models for our youth.