16 Ways to Score in Team Sports
If you happen to be a football fan, it can be painful watching your team struggle to even get on the scoreboard. There’s usually a lot of armchair quarterbacking and coaching going on anyway, but it can reach a fever pitch. People start calling for the coaches’ jobs and trash-talking team members.
Coaches of team sports are often fired because of a losing season.
One coach commented that it’s always interesting when the fate of one’s career rests in the hands of 18- to 22-year-olds.
After a weekend of tough losses in college football, posts like this tend to appear on social media:
“ … I grew up in a house where my Daddy was born and raised an Alabama boy and my Mama was born and raised a Tennessee girl. We never ever talked trash. Did we have healthy teasing? Sure! But never ugly at all! I also grew up with my Daddy being a referee and was taught to show respect to the umpire or referee and to never EVER run my mouth. What I have found is we have a stadium full of disrespectful people who boo kids, coaches and referees and could care less what anyone thinks.
“ … I challenge anyone who has ever played a competitive sport to stop and think. Did you ever think, man I can’t wait to go out and suck today?! NO! Not once did I ever think that and I bet there isn’t another athlete OR COACH who has either! How about your boss?! How about if you messed up or if your team messed up and people started screaming for your job!? Tonight I hurt for a couple who I met and know are amazing because I know their love for these kids. So scream all you want but maybe just maybe it might be about more than points on a scoreboard. Maybe it’s about a family, a kid who did their best but still isn’t good enough but had so much pressure.”
This post brings up a really great point – what exactly are these kids doing? Is there more to this picture than winning and that college athletics is a big business that brings in money for the school? Every institution of higher learning would probably say their goal is to produce successful leaders, and for their athletes to graduate. They understand that very few of their athletes will go on to play professional sports.
It’s helpful to know that the brain’s prefrontal cortex, where mental control and self-regulation occur, isn’t fully formed until around age 25. These coaches and their staff are taking kids who are still maturing and not only helping them develop as players, but as people. They spend a lot of time making sure team sports players have access to helpful resources for academics, character development, personal boundaries and decision-making.
Family members of coaches or players on the field also feel the sting of the boos from supposed fans when their family member or their team isn’t having a good game. Even some coaches’ family members experience ruthless bullying. People talk about players on social media as if they were NFL professionals, when they are only 18- to 22-year-olds.
So, what exactly is college football or any other collegiate team sport really about?
When Kansas State University Head Coach Bill Snyder took over the football program in 1989, he took over the “worst NCAA Division 1 football program on planet Earth.” The team is now ranked third in the Big 12 Conference. In his book, They Said It Couldn’t Be Done, Snyder outlines how he transformed a losing team into a winning team with his 16 goals for success.
Here’s the list:
- Commitment – To common goals and to being successful.
- Unselfishness – There is no “I” in TEAM
- Unity – Come together as never before.
- Improve – Every day … as a player, person and student.
- Be tough – Mentally and physically.
- Self-discipline – Do it right, don’t accept less.
- Great effort
- Enthusiasm
- Eliminate mistakes – Don’t beat yourself.
- Never give up
- Don’t accept losing – If you do so one time, it will be easy to do so for the rest of your life.
- No self-limitations – Expect more of yourself.
- Expect to win – And truly believe we will.
- Consistency – Your very, very best every time.
- Leadership – Everyone can set an example.
- Responsibility – You are responsible for your own performance.
Snyder’s list is clearly about far more than football – it’s about life. It’s about helping college football players to be winners in life, understand a commitment to something they believe matters, and pursue excellence in their accomplishments. It’s also about helping these men understand what it means to persist against the odds, teaching them how to pick themselves up after making a mistake and carry on, and showing them what it looks like to give their best. This mindset can lead to success off the field, on the job and in all of life’s relationships.
Raising Successful Children
Parents often say they want healthy, happy, and successful children. But do their actions actually help or hurt when preparing their kids for these things?
“Many parents micromanage their children’s lives,” says Charlie Sykes, author of Dumbing Down our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write or Add.
“Between parents who are extremely anxious to make sure their children are always happy and the obsession of the education system about self-esteem, we have this weird stew that profoundly impacts our children in lasting ways.”
How do children become successful and responsible adults if they don’t work through problems, fail, or deal with difficult people?
Many parents hover over their young adult kids. Some even call employers and interfere in their child’s love life.
“Instead of allowing them to experience adversities, parents bubble-wrap their kids,” Sykes says. “This keeps children from developing coping and problem-solving skills. People learn how to be competent adults by working through the bumps and bruises and ups and downs. If parents do this for them, the kids have no immunity to the normal curve balls life throws at us.”
According to Sykes, learning to say no is key for parents who want to help their kids succeed. This means choosing not to enable, be a good buddy, or be constantly concerned about staying on their kids’ good side.
“I think I had wonderful parents,” Sykes says. “I guarantee you they were not obsessed about what I thought or felt about them. They did not freak out when I was unhappy about their decisions. They stayed the course as my parents. Instead of being concerned about how I felt on a particular day, they were focused on the end results.”
Sykes says that insulating our kids from reality and responsibility isn’t helpful.
Instead, picking positive and negative role models and finding out what they do with their children can be used to help you copy what you want to see.
“If you inflate your children’s expectations, every area of life, including work, marriage and parenting will disappoint them,” Sykes says. “Parents who believe it is their job to meet every single ‘want’ of their child run the risk of creating unrealistic expectations. This will probably lead to great disappointment in life.”
So, maybe it’s a good idea for all of us to step back and evaluate what we currently do for our kids. Who knows? We may decide to try something different to help our children successfully move toward adulthood.
Other resources:
10 Things All Dads Need to Do to Help Their Child Be Successful
How Children Succeed
What exactly does it take for a child to succeed in life? Is it good grades? High test scores? Tenacity?
According to Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character and Whatever it Takes, adults focus on high test scores, pre-admission to preschool and SAT scores as child-success indicators.
Based on research, however, Tough says we focus too much on these areas. He believes that the most important qualities have more to do with character. These skills include perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism and self-control.
Tough and his wife became parents while he was writing his book. Surprisingly, the research actually made him a more relaxed parent. When his son was born, Tough was very much caught up in the idea of childhood as a race – the faster a child develops skills and the better he does on tests, the better he’ll do in life.
These days, the author is much less concerned about his son’s reading and counting ability. While he certainly believes those things are important, he’s more concerned about his character. He wants his son to be able to recover from disappointments, calm himself down, keep working at a puzzle even when it’s frustrating and be good at sharing. He also wants his son to feel loved and confident, and have a full sense of belonging. Most importantly, Tough wants his son to be able to handle failure.
It’s hard for us parents to let our children fail. Why is that? Because everything in us wants to shield them from trouble. But Tough and others are now discovering that we may actually harm our children when we try to protect them. By not allowing them to learn to manage adversity or to cope with failure, we produce kids who have real problems when they grow up. Overcoming adversity produces character. And character, even more than IQ, leads to real and lasting success.
According to Tough, scientists realize that early adversity in a child’s life affects the conditions of their lives.
It can also alter the physical development of their brains. This knowledge is being used nationwide to help children overcome constraints.
Regardless of socioeconomic status, Tough contends that children with the proper support in the most painful circumstances can still achieve amazing things. But many children do not grow up with that right support. For example, there may be two parents in the home who are so bent on their child’s success that they never let him experience failure. Or at the completely opposite end of the spectrum, there’s no support to help the child get back up when he fails.
Relationships are Key to Happiness
What’s the secret to a happy life? Many might say that money is a big part of the equation. But intrigued with discovering the secrets to a meaningful and happy life, a group of Harvard researchers launched a study in 1938. Then, they followed 268 male Harvard undergraduates – for 75 years.
The unique Harvard Grant Study collected data on the men’s lives through surveys and interviews. They looked at all aspects, including relationships, politics and religion, coping strategies and alcohol use. What they found may surprise you.
Perhaps one of the biggest revelations was that love really does matter when it comes to living a fulfilled life.
In his book about the study, Triumphs of Experience, Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant, study director from 1972 to 2004, writes: “There are two pillars of happiness. One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.”
The study’s most important finding?
Relationships are the only things that matter in life. You could have a successful career, money and good physical health, but without supportive, loving relationships, you’d be unhappy. The ability to take in love is a great human skill.
Interestingly, Vaillant says that so many of the things people thought mattered when it comes to happiness don’t. For example, many believe money and social class are vital to success. These two things were at the bottom of the list.
Even our earliest relationships are important to long-term happiness, especially the mother-child relationship. Men who had a warm mother-child bond were less likely to develop dementia later in life. They were also more likely to have professional success.
Avoiding smoking and not abusing alcohol were by far the most important things to increase longevity. The study found that alcohol abuse was the greatest disruptor of health and happiness for the study’s subjects. Alcoholism was the leading cause of divorce among the 268 men and their wives. Plus, a strong correlation existed between alcohol abuse, neurosis and depression. Interestingly, the mental illness followed the alcohol abuse rather than preceding it.
More money, power and intelligence do not mean more happiness.
Vaillant found that men with IQs between 110 and 115 were no more or less happy than men with IQs higher than 150. Furthermore, the only thing that really matters when it comes to achievement is contentment at work. Having a meaningful connection to our work is more important than achieving traditional success.
Additionally, Vaillant found that early success did not necessarily mean future success. Conversely, failure early in life did not necessarily mean ultimate failure. In fact, some who seemed they would not end up doing well actually became successful. Vaillant shares that the journey from immaturity to maturity is a sort of movement from narcissism to connection. Moreover, a big part of this shift has to do with the way challenges are handled.
In the end, it all comes back to relationships, connection and love. Are you on a pathway to happiness and a meaningful life or a dead-end road?
