We've completed our preseason tournament and a couple of regular season games. Where are we as a team? During games, remind the girls to FOCUS on how we're playing, not the scoreboard. Between games, encourage players to concentrate on continuing growth, not our record.
Darren Hardy, in The Compound Effect, shares some great points.
“You alone are responsible for what you do, don’t do, or how you respond to what’s done to you.”
“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.”
“In essence, you make your choices, and then your choices make you.”
Regardless of the outcome, one should not make overarching judgments on a small sample size. Successful people learn from the past without dwelling on it. We need creative engagement to move forward constructively.
First, we understand our priorities - mission first and team first. That means each player demonstrates 'team first' play with commensurate actions (sharing the ball, cutting, screening, shot selection) and efforts (communication, hustle, rebounding).
Second, we need common goals. For a developmental team, that means individual improvement in athleticism, fundamental skill, and game understanding and the development of unity and TEAM play.
The "star of the TEAM is the TEAM." The stars represent the contribution of each individual to the well-being and unity of the collective whole. The circle represents completeness, eternity and timelessness, a lack of divisions, and no beginning nor end.
Brian Hines discusses establishing a perimeter for your team. "Within the perimeter lie mutual respect, fairness, recognition, meaningful work, loyalty, caring, friendship, and flexibility."
He also writes about keeping harmful elements outside "self-service, contempt, favoritism, unfairness, smugness, complaining, insulting, stonewalling, lying, cheating, and stealing. These ills will destroy a team from within."
Third, our priorities of what we practice and how we practice, our attention to detail determine our destiny. Game play simply reflects what we carry forward from practice and what we don't. For example, our execution of BOBs (baseline out of bounds plays) is poor. I own that because players are not consistently getting the opportunities we should. Execution needs to reflect concepts. That will be a secondary focus (to skill development) at practice this week.