Recommendation: If you are fortunate enough to have a great team heading into this season, how should you handle them? Here are 3 suggestions to follow:
1. Don't dwell on the fundamentals, but don't neglect them either.
Stripped to their lowest common denominators, plays and patterns are nothing more than action sequences involving timing and the execution of fundamental skills. When the timing is wrong, practice the play. When the execution is wrong, go back and work on the fundamentals.
2. Work great teams hard in daily practices.
It's not that weaker teams should not be worked less hard; however great teams need a little extra push. No individual or team can achieve its full potential with less than a total effort in daily practice and games. Thinking other otherwise inevitably leads to falling short of one's goals regardless of how high those aspirations may be.
Psychologically, the difference between weak and great teams is that while weak players focus on the effort involved and its physical discomfort, great players focus on the rewards. Vince Lombardi once said, "Each Sunday after the battle, on group savors victory, another lives the bitterness of defeat. The practice and the hard work of the season seam a small price for having won. But there are no reasons that are adequate for having lost."
3. Great teams respond to great challenges.
Great teams need a challenging schedule. Challenges are the life's blood of great teams and players. Without sufficient challenges, they grow stale and listless in their performance, and their attitude toward playing suffers accordingly. Worse, they cease to grow and develop and they lose the competitive sharpness that otherwise characterizes their play. From a coaching standpoint, the thrill of watching players respond to great challenges can't be matched.
From "Coaching and Control" by Williams Warren via the Championship Performance newsletter.
