Some of the greatest people in the world…

…wash floors, clean houses, or take care of other’s who cannot take care of themselves. I was listening to Coach K’s book “Beyond Basketball” while I was working out this morning. Coach K speaks very highly of his mother, Emily Krzyzewski. He says she was one of the greatest people that he has ever known, and she cleaned the Chicago Athletic Club for years. So, he discovered at a young age that some of the greatest people clean up after others for a living. This story got me thinking about my wife, Angie. My wife is one of the greatest, most giving, and the most selfless people I have ever had the opportunity to know. She has given up almost all of her own personal dreams to allow me to pursue mine. She is a wonderful mother, and she does whatever it takes to make sure our family has what it needs, even if that means taking care of elderly people who cannot take care of themselves for over 40 hours a week during the middle of the night. Angie leaves for work at 10 P.M. every night, and returns home at 7 A.M., and is lucky to steal a couple hours of sleep before having to pick up our youngest from preschool at 11 A.M. She never complains or feels sorry for herself, she just does what is necessary. She makes sure our team at home has everything it needs, so that I can make sure that my team here at school has every opportunity for success. I am so lucky to know the greatest person in the world, and I only hope I can give back to her a small percentage of what she has given me. Make sure you tell that person in your life who has given you the opportunity to pursue your dreams that you love them.

Little Moments Like This

I heard a college football coach recently have to justify his excitement he shares with his players. He shows positive excitement when they make big plays and score touchdowns. He gives them high fives, and even the occasional chest bump. Too often coaches are expected to be stoic, or only show the emotion of getting in a players face who has just made a mistake. This coach justified his actions by stating there is so much stress and pressure on coaches and athletes, and success is not guaranteed, that we should really relish and appreciate the positive moments. I think he hit the nail on the head. As long as you can be humble and show good sportsmanship, you should be happy and excited when your team has success. Life is too short to be a grumpy old coach. We are going to enjoy the moment that we had last night. My team defeated our rival, we haven’t been in the same conference since 2003, and this was a really big deal for our community and for our program. It feels really good, and we know that we have matches coming up that we have to prepare for, but we are going to take a little bit of time to thank God for the opportunity to compete, and enjoy little moments like this.

FAITH

Anyone who knows me well, would not categorize me as a religious person.  In fact, I am a self-proclaimed doubter for most of my life.  But something significant happened to me this weekend.  While reading the book, The Mentor Leader, by Tony Dungy, I came across a passage from the Bible about Faith.  ”Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see” (Hebrews 11:1).  First of all, this quote got me thinking about one of the steps along our journey, which is, “belief without proof.”  Which I think really means having faith.  We haven’t proved ourselves yet, but we have to believe that we are good, and that we deserve to have success.  Secondly, it got me thinking about my collegiate career.  During every National Anthem I used to speak to my mom’s Uncle Jack who had passed away in 1999.  He was a hero of mine, even though most of what I knew of him came from stories my mom told me (I only ever met him once).  Although I had my doubts about God, I believed my Uncle Jack was looking upon me.  Those silent prayers before each game gave me a great sense of peace that everything would work out for the best.  I believed I had the strength and courage to go out and put my best foot forward, and good things would happen because of that.  I started really doing some soul-searching when we arrived at our hotel, and did some major contemplating about what it means to have faith.  I decided that I needed to talk to our players about faith, and in turn I needed to back up my own words, and have faith myself.  I had a long talk with God, and if nothing else, God is a great listener.  The sense of relief I felt afterwards was immense, and in turn the pressure was taken off.  When the pressure is off, your mind clears, and you can coach at a whole other level.  I also got back in touch with my Uncle Jack, and I felt him there with me.  He was helping me coach in a calm-assertive state.  He helped me make quality decisions, and I know he saw to it that my players brought confidence, strength, and faith to the court.

The Fever Remains

I woke up today with the fever for the season still burning. We are about 30 days away from the players reporting for the 2011 season, and it can’t get here soon enough for me. I really tried to not think about volleyball during the month of June, and I believe I did a fairly good job of just letting go for a little while (I think coaching both my boy’s baseball teams helped). But that being said, it is time for volleyball…I can’t wait to see us running “the system” soon. I can’t wait to see the new players find their place in this program. And I can’t wait to see the returners step onto the floor with the new confidence they gained this past spring. We are ready…ready to leap…ready to grab our destiny…ready to reach the peak of the Summit. Go ‘Yotes!

Fall Fever

Well, we just finished up our off-season tourneys…with a sweep.  We didn’t drop a set, and we ran “The System” the best we ever have.  This has got me wishing we could skip over summer and get right to the season.  I would give up the warm weather this summer, if we could just fast forward.  I am so excited about the way we trained and grew as a team over the last four months that I just don’t want to stop.  I have had some seasons in my career where I was very ready for summer break, where I just felt like we all needed a little time away from each other, but not with this group.  I just want to keep training and playing.  This is a special group of kids, and we are adding some great ones next fall.  For the first time in my career, “The System” is taking shape.  It has been living in my head for so long…and now to see it take shape on the floor is a dream realized.  I hope somewhere Hank is smiling down at me.  He might not have been a volleyball player or even a fan, but I hope he knows how he inspired me.  Ever since I was 11 years old, I have dreamed of putting a product out on the floor that would make Hank proud.  Well, I think we are close.  Play with the HEART OF A LION!

Catching up

I can’t express how sorry I am that I haven’t posted in quite some time.  I want this to be a place where people can really follow the life of a young coach, and also this program that I am doing my best to lead.  Since my last post, I have been doing a lot of writing about my experiences but not much posting.  Instead of catching you all up, I am going to just take you into life as it stands right now.

 

One thing I have really been trying to contemplate is what is this life of coaching…I sit and watch ESPN at night, and it is all fogged up with the mistakes of coaches and players that put their careers in jeopardy.  I feel like our moral compass has been stolen, and our definition of success has been turned on its head.  I hope I never work for a boss that asks me to choose winning over doing what is right, and I hope I never put a kids physical ability ahead of their mental and moral ability.  I am blessed with a wife who always reminds me of how I got here, and I stay here (in this profession).

 

That being said, I am very appreciative of our current players.  They have done an outstanding job this off-season with dedicating themselves to getting better in all aspects of this world of collegiate volleyball (classroom, weight room, team unity, and on the court).  They are a “refuse to not get better” group.  What I really like about them is that they are a group that returns six starters that overcame a lot of “failure” last season.  They started the season 2-15, and went on to win 12 of their last 16 matches, and made it to the Conference Championship match.  Here is a quote from Bill Walsh that describes why I know we will have success here at USD, and why success is not instant, and why we are striving to have success that is maintained over the course of time.

 

“Pursuing your ambitions, especially those of any magnitude, can be grueling and hazardous, and produce agonizing failure along the way, but achieving those goals is among life’s most gratifying and thrilling experiences.  The ability to survive and overcome the former to attain the latter is a fundamental difference between winners and losers.”

 

I promise I will be better at staying current with this blog.  I appreciate all of you that have taken a stake in USD Volleyball, and the development of me as a leader…a leader who strives to do things the right way, and to do right by this program and the players who make it up.

Passion and Pride

Last night The University of South Dakota Volleyball team broke their 13 match losing streak. And we did by letting our passion for the game flow out onto the court, and by taking pride in everything we did last night. I have known for a while that we had the physical talent to have success on the court, but we were lacking a sense of intensity and passion that great teams have. Last night we displayed that from start to finish, and those attributes gave us a mental edge, and I think it also started to help us develop a better sense of mental toughness. A couple of weeks ago when a team really pushed us, we backed down. Last night, we did not. We pushed back…we were a prized fighter who took the fight to our challenger. I told the players that we are looking for tough minded players, so if you want to find yourself out on the court, you better prove to us that you can rise to the challenge, take criticism, show passion, and to bring a tough attitude to the court. The players out there last night showed those intangibles. We still had flaws in our game, and we have things we need to fix, but when you play the game with passion, you can make up for a lot of shortcomings. Some of our greatest clutch performers in sports have had physical flaws, but they had the mental toughness and intestinal fortitude to succeed.

The Joy of Failing

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” -RFK

You may be asking yourself, how can failing be a joyous occasion. On the surface it is not a joyous affair, but when we start to scrape away the image of failure, we start to grasp the positive effect it has on our lives. Unfortunately, too many people can only see the negative side of failing. For instance, a coach has a losing season, and all the people or the coach him/herself take away from it is the numbers in the win – loss column, or what they read in the papers, or the judgement passed by their peers. Yet, they miss more important lesson that failing causes. First, it is a great motivator. I don’t like the feeling I get deep down in my gut when I lose or fail, and that motivates me to make a change, so that I don’t have to have that feeling again. Secondly, we miss the opportunity to learn and grow. There is always a reason that a failure happened. All too often though, we look to blame first, and we don’t accept that we had a stake in the reason that it happened. When we accept that we were part of it, we can then start to use the failure for what it was worth. It was an experience of our life, that gave us an opportunity to be a better version of ourselves the following day. We have to find a way to not stress about the fact that we didn’t accomplish what we set out to do; instead, we go find the reasons for our shortcomings, and commit ourselves to change and improvement. We need to go commit ourselves to the process, and understand that change takes patience. Not every change will take place overnight, but if we come up with a quality routine and process (and we stick to it), the change we want to see will happen. And then, and only then, can we find the true joy of failing.

“If you have never failed, you have not lived.” -unknown

A New Day

I love sports…every sport. I love to compete, always have. But one of the main reasons I love sports is because of how closely it mirrors life. Sports teach us so much about how to handle difficult situations, and also about the kind of person we will be when faced with adversity. As a player, I thrived in adverse situations…I loved the feeling I got in my stomach when faced with pressure. I find as a coach that it is much different. I now rely on 18-to-22-year-old kids for my successes or failures. I sometimes feel like I don’t have a direct relationship with the outcomes. That is why coaching is such a unique profession; you can think that you did everything right in practice; you can put the line-up out there that you know is going to succeed, and it just might not work. This is the point when some doubt creeps in, and I find myself fighting it off with every ounce of fury I have, as if I were fighting for my life in a dark ally.

Then I wake up, and the sun is shining, and I hear Ernie Banks in my head saying, “The sun is shining, the sky is blue, let’s play two.” And this is when I realize my role in the crazy world of athletics. I have to decide to show these young adults how to deal with adversity…I have to be their role model. I might not be able to play for them, but I can show them the path for success in life. I have the goal to change the world, and the way I can do that is to help these young adults become the best versions of themselves. Life is going to throw crap, junk, shit…whatever you want to call it…at them all the time. Do you ball up in the corner, and pray it goes away, or do you face the adversity head on. Do you say, “today is a new day, and I accept this challenge, and I will face it with all I have.” That is what I have told myself this morning, and that is what I will relay to my team. We are facing some major mental adversity. We have lost seven matches in a row, and we face two very good opponents today. We have a decision to make. Do we sit back and just take whatever punishment our opponents are going to dish out, or do we wake up, and realize that today is a new day. A new day, that allows us to refocus our efforts, and become a better version of ourselves. I cannot rate myself on whether or not I am doing right by these kids yet, I won’t know that answer for 20 years. That is when I will be able to witness what kind of adults they turned out to be.

The Cornerstone of Leadership

“Humility.” What a hard concept…to accept that to be a great leader, you have to be a great servant. I am reading a book by John Miller called, “QBQ.” It is the second time I have read it now, but it is just as informative and thought inducing as the first time.

As a person in a leadership role, it is often tough to make this program not about me. Coaches are supposed to have egos…they romp up and down the sideline, drawing a ton of attention to themselves, and making the game about them. Instead, I think we should step back, and let our players play the game (if I have done my job in practice, they should be prepared to play the game). We(I) should spend more time asking ourselves the question during the game of how can I better serve my players right now (so they get the best out of this experience, or perform to the best of their abilities).

“I will serve you so you can succeed.” -John Miller

“The greatest amongst you must be the servant.” -Jesus

Leaders, I implore you to ask a better question, “how can I better serve you today, so you can do your job to the best of abilities.”

“No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.” -Calvin Coolidge