Last week I attended a Coaching Roundtable at UT Arlington. The new UTA head coach, Chris Ogden, had came from the staff of Chris Beard at Texas Tech. When asked about the keys to success at Tech under Beard, Ogden responded, “Relationships. He spends more time with them off the court then on. He believes getting to know his players is 90% more important than the X & O’s.”
Coach Ogden said that daily Beard would meet with players — sometimes armed with only one video clip to begin a discussion.
Our ability to teach at the maximum level starts and ends with the connections we have with those people we want to lead.
In an article on NESN by Joshua Schrock about the Celtics Jayson Tatum, he was asked to compared his college coach, Mike Krzyzewski to his NBA coach Brad Stephens. His response:
“They are both very, very good coaches. Coach K is a lot more animated. He yells a lot more. Brad is a lot more reserved and laid back. But I think the thing about both of them is how they connect with their players. Brad being so young and Coach K being so old and being able to connect with 18-year-olds, and that’s why a lot of kids go to Duke.”
Two different methods of coaching yet both grounded by their ability to connect to their players.
