Winning Streaks

Our 16 game winning streak was broken right before the County Tournament. We were one of the few, if not the only team in Bergen County left to be undefeated. I try to stay as realistic as possible, I know we were not going to go the entire season undefeated. "WE GOT HOT EARLY". I was anticipating a loss, just not the way we ended up losing. Down by 2 points at half, we were still in it! You hear coaches say this all the time, "We didn't have enough energy/enthusiasm to withstand the loss" and this was exactly the case for #EMERSON. My kids were flat but everyone is entitled to a bad game. I always thought I was lucky because we had 5 kids in the scoring rotation, really anyone could pick us up at any given time, like they had the last 16 games. Unfortunately this was not the case for game #17 verse one of our biggest rivals, Cresskill.

We ended up losing the game by 12 points but 14 in the books (another story). I spent most of the second half pulling some "remember the titans" crap instead of sticking to the game plan and being patient with the offense. It's hard to get over something like that, Passion obviously or hopefully drives a lot of coaches. When your kids don't feed off that its not easy. I was blessed that this was the one time out of 30 games this year my kids didn't bring the passion/motivation. We had a great talk the next day at practices, "I WILL BRING THE X's and O's, you bring the ENERGY" Lesson well learned.

There's Simply NO Substitute for Practice and Hard Work!

The Best Do Ordinary Things Better Than Everyone Else:

It's really about doing the little thing over time 10%, 5% , or even 1% better than everyone else. Its the little things that separate the best from the rest. Practicing those basic fundamentals over and over has brought our program a step up after 2 years. 5 % of an athletes life is made up of the actual game day performance, 95% is made up of the time spent preparing and waiting to perform. Im a huge believer in "Its how you prepare for game day that makes you perform so well, not your actual performance on that game day".

Training Camp by Jon Gordan is a fable about excellence. Are your athletes willing to pay the price with countless hours of hard work on the court and off the court? I think my kids are willing to pay the price, but I do not think they are self motivated and self disciplined. With out being pushed they would not be working out once a week on their skills, lifting twice a week to prevent injury and playing in their sunday league on their own. I wish they understood that your suppose to spend thousands of hours in the weight room, training in the off season, conditioning during the week, studying film, going over plays and so on. I emphasize the importance of quality they put into the short periods of work they give me during the week.

Whats your Game Day Principle? Mine is to prepare. This fall we have been preparing with a treadmill work out I got from Alan Stein and Individual Skill work. I asked each kid to complete the treadmill run with in a month and work out once a week on their skill set with sheet attached to the left to compliment their sunday league.

Starting next week we are on to the next treadmill work out and will start open gyms with our Freshman, JV and Varsity kids.

Season is around the corner and I am excited as ever.

EMERSON CAR WASH

The Emerson Girls Basketball Program will be having it's annual car wash this Saturday, Oct. 8th 2001 10:30 am - 2:00pm, 131 Main Street, Emerson NJ 07630 for $5.00 a Car. Please come down and help support the troops!

Feed The Positive Dog

"The Energy Bus" by JON GORDON has me incorporating new positive techniques into my coaching. In the past I revolved my coaching on constructive criticism, even though I have NOT totally let that go, I am learning to "FEED THE POSITIVE DOG". Everyone has positive and negative energy in them, in order to bring out the positive we need to keep feeding it with positive things, positive energy, words of encouragement. If we don't keep feeding the positive dog, the negative one is going to take over. I try to start things positive, then discuss the not so positive things and finish with more positive. When one of my kids is on the foul line shooting free throws I tell the rest of the team to "feed the positive dog". My kids answer with "Come on Chase, you got it", "Alright Griffin get one here", they respond with positive statements to boost the shooters confidence and it works! Every morning we have a choice, are we going to be a positive thinker or a negative thinker. I am learning that positive thinking gives me more energy.

Leading at a "Higher Level", what ever level that is for each one of us personally means you need to be open to new ideas and willing to learn as much as you can. "Everything is Learnable". No one creates success alone. This is very true for me at EMERSON HS. Last season we won our State Sectional and NJIC League Title, and all the support that came with the program made all the difference. We are all teachers and students no matter what our title is. It is important to learn that positive people, positive communication, positive interactions, and positive team cultures produce positive results.

I asked my Emerson kids in this pre-season on a scale from 1-5 how much do they enjoy being on the team. I ask them to take into consideration everything that goes on: the lifting, the scouting reports, the film sessions, the running, the yelling, playing all year long etc. I walked away not too pleased with the numbers I received. I want these kids to enjoy this team, my coaching staff and MYSELF more. My goal is to have them enjoy being on the team by being more positive towards each of them.

Mentors

Everyone needs a mentor.

Having someone to share ideas with, seek advice from, and tap into their experience is INVALUABLE.

Being a young coach, I have a lot to learn. I try to better myself as a coach in order to better my program. My team does not get better, If I myself do not put the time and effort into becoming a better coach. I was not ready to do this on my own 3 years ago and Im still not ready. I try to keep strong relationships with people because with out people the learning is limited.

There have been two men most influential in my life, if you know my father you would know I am the spitting image of him from my mannerisms to my personality and even my hand gestures. Then there is Jasper.

Jeff Jasper my HS coach has been around the game over 30 years. He is a vet and a proclaimed name in Bergen County. But most important he is full of knowledge and always willing to share. This relationship already existed from when he coached me 10 years ago, we don't have to work on developing the relationship because its already there. Though the roles have changed from athlete to coach, to colleagues it was a natural transition. I consider Jasper a major influence on my basketball world. His door is always open, a phone call away and always willing to answer my pages of emails!

My mentors are effective in helping me and my team become better. Im always willing to listen to people, even if they have something negative to say. I rather have the opportunity of knowing, than of not having known at all.

Assistant coaches, or at least mine serve as MENTORS as well. I share the same vision, goals and ways of doing things with my assistant coaches; Janet Muller, Jill Muller and Nicole Pacciani. They are coaches I respect and whom I enjoy working with. We usually get together for coaches weekends, or take our graduated seniors out to dinner before they are set off to college. We do a great job micromanaging practice plans, scouting reports, tape and we can all be ourselves with one another.

I am great full for all the mentors in my life. They are the make up of my tactics and personality.

Coaching...

WHAT IS COACHING? When you are the coach of a program, you are like an architect. You are a person with a vision. There is an inspiration and a design that must be communicated to those who will help you build this vision.

WHAT IS MY VISION? My vision is to teach kids about basketball that will carry over off the court: accountability, discipline, communication, trust, leadership, responsibility. Things that my kids can "double dip".

WHY DO I COACH?

I never stopped to think about this question until this summer, it has actually never been asked of me. My first response is that I LOVE BASKETBALL. But then I realized there is a lot more to it. If it were just a game, I would probably be putting my time and effort in other things but there are so many elements to BASKETBALL that forge my passion.

• I love the game.
• I care for the kids that I get to coach.
• I love to TEACH. Coaching provides me with an opportunity to teach kids elements they can double dip on the court and in life. I enjoy teaching values and principles, I enjoy sharing my knowledge of the game.
• Relationships. So many relationships are established with coaching. With: players, parents, administrators, other coaches and the community.
• I like to win.
• I love competition.

All of these impact my coaching behavior, they are motivations for me to better myself as a coach. My behaviors as a coach originate from beliefs that I have about the game and life.

KNOW YOURSELF AS A COACH

Being a young coach, I am a 27 year old female coaching at the HS level in Bergen County, I use as many resources as possible. Out of 30 teams that made the Bergen County Tournament Last year, 5 of those teams were coached by females. This gives me MORE ambition to learn EVEN MORE and better myself as a coach. "Your team only gets better if you, yourself get better". "Your success in your individual role is crucial to the success of the team". These quotes stick with me, and remind me that I need to keep learning about the game.

I use Alan Stein as a major resource. The man is a reading machine and he has inspired me to read more. On his website I came across one of his blogs "Mission Accomplished", where he listed 50 books read in the year. Here is the link if you want to take a look at some great summer/fall reading : http://blog.strongerteam.com/post/2009/12/09/Mission-Accomplished.aspx

I went down the list, highlighted ones I thought would be good for me and this summer I came across "KNOW YOURSELF AS A COACH". This book challenges you as a coach, teaches you to think outside of the box and put things into perspective. The book is full of highlighter, post its and tags by the time I finished reading it. This book is my new BIBLE.

Denny Kuiper helped me understand that the terms "athlete" and "coach" help define who I am. "We athletes and coaches know the advantages of team participation, of learning and practicing and performing together, of reaching for the stars, even of failing. We know we are better for having made the effort". Part of coaching is engaging people everyday, engage them in play that carries over into the rest of their lives.

I will be following up with other things I have learned from the book to share with you. I also plan on sending the Author Denny Kuiper an email expressing my appreciation for a piece of work like this!