Leading Through Losing
I got a great text last week from a former player of mine at the University of Maine who shared a picture of him finishing a marathon in under three hours. He thanked me for the way we coached him at Maine, and told me that the mental toughness we helped instill in him through our program was a big part of his life today - and a big reason why he was able to finish a marathon in under three hours. He’s hoping to qualify for the Boston Marathon in the future. I’ve said this many times - texts like that are really the reason why I coach.
Pat Reilly once said that the essence of coaching was when you see a former player 25 years down the road - a player you didn’t have the best relationship with - and you greet each other with a smile and a hug. There is an understanding between great competitors that everything you did was about pushing each other to the edge to try and find success. High performance is rarely easy and isn’t always pretty. We do what we do in a very intense environment and sometimes that isn’t fun. But it’s all a part of a bigger cause, the chance to touch excellence every day.
I love hearing from my former players, but texts like that from my players at Maine are validation in a different way. We didn’t win at Maine, losing three starters to season ending injuries two years in a row, and losing nine players in four years who transferred to higher level schools. It was a great learning experience for me as a head coach. I came from a place (Rhode Island College) where I coached the best team in the league for nine years and our culture was as tough and tight as anywhere in the country - I promise you that. On top of that, we won big - six tournament titles in nine years and eight straight trips to the NCAA Tournament. Winning validated what we did, as shallow as that sounds. Even the kids who didn’t understand what we were all about had a helluva ride because we were a championship program and a dominant team in New England.
Can you build the same culture if you don't have success? I’ve thought about that question a lot since I left Maine (not to mention a lot while I was still in Maine), and I’ve realized you certainly can. Your culture isn’t about winning, although winning certainly makes establishing your culture a lot easier. But if your culture is about results your culture is pretty shallow to begin with. Buy-in is certainly helped when you win, because everybody enjoys winning. But if winning is the substance of your culture, it won’t last long.
My last home game at Maine was against Vermont on February 27th, 2018. After the game was over I was walking through the empty arena and I noticed a green card by the visitors bench. it was the play card from the Vermont staff which they had left behind. Under the “Our Opponent” headline, the first thing listed was our record, which was 3-12 in the league and 6-24 overall. Then the next line said “Play with great effort, very upbeat, positive way about them, best scramble team in the league.”
“Play with great effort, very upbeat, positive way about them…” Man, I loved seeing that. How often do you see that about a team that is 6-24?
I knew I was leaving Maine after that season. I had turned down a two-year contract extension when I realized that the financial model and the way our players were treated with regards to injuries (in many cases, having to pay for their own care) was not going to work. I spent that year enjoying the hell out of coaching my kids, even though we had suffered so many personnel losses that we could barely compete. But seeing that after my last game made me realize I had succeeded. I had succeeded in building the right culture and doing it the right way, even though we didn’t have success on the court.
Our players gave me everything they had. They bought in to what we were trying to do, but more importantly they understood it. They understood that the scoreboard didn’t reflect who they were. So much of that was out of their control. Who they were was their behavior every day - how they treated people, how they competed, how they cared for one another. And it reflected in the way they played, as Vermont’s scouting report would attest. They understood that that was who they were, and no scoreboard was ever going to tell them they were a loser.
One of the great lessons I learned about my time at RIC as a head coach was that the best way to win big like we did was not to worry about winning. If winning becomes central to who you are, you’ll start finding short cuts to get the results. You’ll take the easy way out, the short-term approach that says “let’s just win tomorrow,” and the crazy thing is you’ll find winning becomes more elusive. If you focus on the kids, the approach, the way you compete, and the habits that go into the right process, you will find success. You’ll find a team that gives you everything they have, a team that trusts you and learns to trust one another. You’ll find a team you’ll love going to battle with every day.
And every now and then you’ll get a text from a former player that makes you feel really good, that reminds you what was really important. You can lead the right way through losing as long as you can focus on your team and who they are - not who others think they are based on the scoreboard.