OFFICE (8-23-2009) - First team meeting of the year is over. It started off great with all 14 players seated in Sandy & Stephen Lucas Theater, 13 minutes before our official start time. Being on time is not the Lady Tiger Way -- being early is and it's nice to see a new team start of the year. The one quality of Coach Chancellor's that stands out is enthusiasm -- he's always "on!" Today was no exception. After passing out the notebooks we then went over some of our guidelines. We like to use the word "guidelines" as opposed to "rules." Coach Chancellor starts by stating that these guidelines aren't just about being a good student-athlete -- "these are guidelines that will serve you successful for the rest of your life." Key guidelines for Lady Tigers include:
-Puncuality (don't be on time -- be early)
-Appearance (represent the program)
-Conduct (do the right thing, the right way, everytime)
-Team (be there for each other, help each other)
Don't seem like much but it has been the secret for our success for years. It has became a staple in our program to where the upperclassmen teach the new players and they actually police themselves. A perfect example is two years ago at a summer weight session, a player showed up two minutes late. NCAA rules do not permit the strength coach to discipline in the summer at all. So the team huddled up and decided that after weights that they would run a mile as a team to "punish" themselves for a teammate's mistake. That team won the SEC and played in our 5th consecutive Final Four.
After the guidelines, it was time for expectations. Coach Chancellor kept that short and simple as well.
"With such a young team last year, we had an excellent fall and laid the foundation for a good season," he said to them today. "But our defintion of a great fall this year will be one where we work hard than we did a year ago. We know more coming into this season as players and as a team and we need to commit to doing more and doing it better."
He spoke about this effecting our conditioning, strength training and basketball.
And with that, the first team meeting was over -- 30 minutes. Perfect! The players than left to go have physicals and meet with team doctors and then off to the first academic seminar of the year. They will finish up later tonight at the CHAMPS Back to School Bash and I'll have some photos and updates from that later.
