A COACHING FRIEND once told me, “One good coach equals 4 or 5 good players.” I believe that this is absolutely true. Coaches who are highly motivated and driven can create the desire and passion in young people to please their coaches and reach their physical and mental potential. Therefore, to run a successful program, you must first have a truly dedicated coaching staff.
It’s the job of the head coach to coach the coaching staff. He must inspire the staff to work their tails off so they’re ready and prepared to motivate the players.
Vision Of Perfection
The essence of coaching is the correction of errors and the reduction of mistakes. However, it’s how you correct those mistakes, and how consistently and positively you make your corrections that makes the difference. The “how’s” determine whether the correction stays with that player over the entire season — and follows through into his life after football.
Conviction-driven leadership is based on a “vision of perfection.” Coaches must have a vision of what a play or a particular defense is supposed to look like. Quality coaches are patient and relentless in the pursuit of this vision of perfection. Getting your players to visualize the perfection that you seek is the key toward getting them to take ownership of their progress.
Mike Ditka was once asked how he became such a good motivator. He said, “I surround myself with people who want to be motivated.” This theory may work with people who are receiving paychecks for playing football, but high school and college coaches don’t often have the luxury of selecting those who automatically want to be motivated. It’s up to the coaches get players jacked up and pumped up to play — through use of various methods — to get the team to perform in conformity with their vision.
Building Confidence
Another coach mentioned something to me that has always resonated with me over the years. He said, “A coach’s job is to help young people find and conquer themselves.” I’ve used this statement as the basis for my motivational program for many years.
How many of your players have the talent and ability, but seem to be their own worst enemy? They make bad choices in their personal lives, classroom work, or are afraid to put their whole heart and soul into their workouts or practices.
Many times, they either lack confidence in themselves or are afraid of failure. Someone in their lives may have beaten them down over time with negative comments or criticism that caused them to doubt their abilities. They no longer dream the big dreams that are necessary to be as successful as they could be. It’s the coach’s job to get them over being afraid of failure and to get them to stop dangling one foot in the water from the edge of the pool and to instead “dive into the water” full-throttle, without hesitation.
Knowledge Is Power
I once heard a great coach say that, “Mental is to physical is as 3 is to 1.” A coach, as a player’s mentor and potential “hero,” must work on his mind. The saying, “With knowledge there is power,” is especially relevant to coaching and it is the coach’s job to inspire his players to pursue knowledge. A coach must impress his players with this knowledge and let them know how it will benefit them.
Coaches must realize that a player begins to put his heart and soul into football only when he realizes that you, his coach, really cares and is interested in helping him reach his potential.
All coaches agree that “winning is a by-product of doing things the right way.” You must tell your players this and then prove it to them through example — and also by the way you demonstrate your ability to handle adversity.
In almost all winning football programs, for example, the coaches know that being physical is an absolute necessity. In our program, we preach to players from the very beginning that “If you don’t hit, you sit!”
Motivating players to be tough hitters takes time, patience and encouragement, and you often have to wait for them to get strong enough to believe that they can be the “hitter” and not the “hittee.” And players must understand that if they are not a hitter, they’ll be replaced by a player who will hit. Being a consistent hitter must be demanded and rewarded with recognition.
Staying Focused
In football, and in the game of life, things don’t always go as planned. In our program we preach to our players, “Don’t play the last play, play the next play.” Players must be taught to bounce right back up when they’ve made a mistake and forget about it. It’s over and there’s nothing to be done about it except to make up for the error later on in the game.
Your players must understand that great athletes in the world make mistakes, but the greatest ones forget about it immediately and come back strong. Think of Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Dan Marino or Walter Payton. Did any of these players dwell on a mistake?
I once heard Lou Holtz say at a coaches convention, “Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems, but somewhere in-between reality lies.” Players must be taught to not over-celebrate on a big play and also to immediately forget a bad play. Play the next play! Consistent performance in an athlete can’t be achieved until he’s learned how to handle adversity in a competitive environment.
Dealing With Adversity
Quite often, your season does not start the way you had planned. In a recent season, for example, we were the reigning state champions in Indiana, and we had a great nucleus of talent to realistically pursue another state title. We had 12 future college players in our senior class and we were ranked 5th in the USA Today poll.
We had some negative circumstances develop, one of which was cockiness among our players (and coaches) and we found ourselves with a 2-3 record after 5 games. In the face of adversity, we reminded our players that “It’s not how you start the race, but how you finish that matters most.”
Isn’t that true in the game of life also? Coaches are teaching these young people to be consistent performers on the field, and at the same time teaching them to be resilient in handling life’s many setbacks. After the poor 2-3 start that year, we won 10 straight games and won a consecutive state championship, winning the title game 31-7.
Building A Feeder Program
Getting young athletes in your area to start playing football at a very young age is a necessity — particularly in this day and age of “sports specialization.” If you don’t, there’s a good chance that you’ll never see the athletes because another sport will latch on to them. For our program, we started a Cadet Football League for grades 2 to 6 and selected a traveling team for the Indiana Elementary Football Association.
We put strict limitations on the number of offensive formations and defensive fronts that could be used by the coaches of these squads. In short, we simplify the game so that the little guys could learn the fundamentals first, without being overly worried about their assignments.
No motion or 1-back sets are allowed on our youth-league teams. In addition, only one defensive front is allowed. Every team must line up in a 4-4 look virtually every down. We eliminated all blitzing and stunting to simplify the blocking schemes so that the offensive linemen can learn who they are supposed to block on each play. At this age, the focus should be on teaching blocking and tackling — not on the coach’s ability to design a play, blitz or stunt that no one could block.
Youth Coach Guidelines
On these feeder teams, we informed all of the youth coaches that no cursing is tolerated, and that the true measure of whether or not they had a successful season will not be determined until they found out how many of their former players were still playing football the following season.
If the coach was able to teach young kids to love the game, then he had done the job right. Our coaches are directed to teach life-long lessons and values like those taught in our high school program.
To help the coaches and players, our staff began a summer football-technique school to impart the knowledge that we knew would lead to power and confidence in the players. Consistent performance on the field comes from a habit of executing the fundamentals correctly — and the earlier you teach young players, the fewer the bad habits that need to be broken later.
Evaluation Conference
At the high school level, at the end of each season, I would sit down with each player and hold an evaluation conference. These conferences were an attempt to build on my relationship with the young man.
During these sessions, I reviewed the player’s past weight-lifting test results and went over the evaluation sheet that his position coach completed on him. We talked about the player’s future goals, academic goals, achievements or areas of needed improvement, as well as athletic-, strength- and speed-objective levels.
We discussed the player’s role in the program for the next year. We’d also address things such as whether or not a position change would be in his best interest to achieve more playing time.
Building Trust,Developing Relationships
In these conferences, we’d also attempt to address any personal or family problems that we were aware of and try to build a relationship of trust between the player and coach. In short, I wanted to develop a type of “father-son” relationship that many times was sorely missing in these young men’s lives. This relationship and bond between player and coach will have a tremendous carryover effect that lasts long beyond their playing. The guidelines that are automatically built into this relationship help a player succeed in his “after-football” life.
It pays on-the-field dividends, too. I once heard Tony Mason, the late coach at the University of Cincinnati, say that in order to get a passionate emotional response from your players 10 to 15 times a year, you must build it throughout the year by your genuine demonstration of caring for each player and his progress — both as a person and a player.
After 37 years of coaching, Dullaghan retired in 2004
with an astounding career record of 312-58. A member of the Indiana Football Hall of Fame, his high school teams won 8 state championships and notched 11 undefeated seasons. He is also a past recipient of the “National-High School-Coach-Of-The-Year Award” by the Associated Press.