Control

So often we feeling like being a leader is having control of everything, when in fact it is often the opposite. As a head coach I learned to fight the pull of trying to control everything.

I started at a D3 state school where you don't really have the control that you want. We had the gymnastics team practicing in our gym with the greatest hits of 1984 blaring over the speakers. Sometimes the wrestling team was on the side court. The physical education teachers had to come in and out to get stuff out of the closet. There was just a lot of stuff around that I couldn't control.

We also couldn't really control our players. We started practice on October 15th and we could coach our guys until the season ended - usually March 15th or so, if we had a great year and went to the Tournament. That's five months we got to coach our guys, and that was it. No off-season workouts, no supervised conditioning, and we couldn't be in the weight room. The strength coach was allowed to handle all of that stuff. The problem was we didn't have a strength coach.

So you can try and control what your players are doing all of the time, but good luck with it. It really wasn't reasonable, which made it really not worth it. So I came to embrace the lack of control as a way of giving the players ownership. Leaving it up to them. I put the off-season on the team, challenging them to make sure they were getting better, staying in great shape and holding each other accountable.

It was really out of necessity, but along the way I started to think about how much control coaches like to have - and I realized it didn't make sense. We always try and control everything - the temperature in the gym, the noise in the building, the right practice time. We want everything to be perfect so our guys can compete and get better at a high level. The problem with that is we don't play in controlled environments. Once the games start, we lose control (literally, and, well, literally). Is controlling everything we can about the environment preparing our guys succeed in games?

At the division I level now we can pretty much control everything. We have off-season workouts. We tell them when they can go home for holidays. They are on campus most of the summer. We get some of our kids just after (or maybe even before) they officially graduate from high school, and we bring them into our programs. And we start controlling them.

Is that the best way to make them better? We feel like we have to "introduce" them to our culture and show them "what it takes" to play at our level. And I certainly get the idea of off-season workouts and making our players better. But isn't there a way to do that without exhibiting so much control? (Hint: I think there is).

The best teams I've ever coached are the ones where they had control. They took ownership of what we were doing. And for them to do that, I had to let go. I had to give them the chance to take control. To make some important decisions and to make some mistakes. If they decide to take a Friday off from pick-up in September to go to a barbecue, is that really going to have lasting damage? When they have control, they own it, and it becomes that much more important to them. So when they are playing or working out on their own, they are a lot more committed to it.

I honestly believe that the more control we have the worse we are as coaches. I know for myself, the more I gave up control, the better my teams played. The more they gave to each other, and gave to the team. It was more personal to them.

I've never been a big fan of summer access or earlier start times in the fall. I think our season is long enough. Of course, we don't have to use all of the time we are allowed, but when we don't we feel like we are falling behind. We constantly have to drive our players to get better. Is that the right approach? I feel like we should create an environment where our players want to get better, and then give them the freedom to do so.

I'll bet if you ask a majority of division I coaches they'd tell you "their guys need it" and "we have to be on them all the time." We all feel that way to some degree. The pressure is real, and so many of our kids do need guidance. But if they don't learn how to get better and the work ethic needed during the year while you are coaching them, something isn't right.

The more we learn to give up control - by creating the right environment where our kids know how to handle it - the better coaches we become.