We all have fear and failure

You know that we all have fear and failure.  Sometimes we get fixated on just winning championships and while we are very proud of that, sometimes those wins are empty.  As I suggested in the earlier blog, what do we become as a result of the chase?  How did you get there?  How did you treat your players during that time?

Here's some of the best advise that I can share with you that was shared with me a long time ago.  Know that there is a 1/3 of the people that you meet that will be trying to drag/bring you down.  They will be trying to take the life out of you.  Selfish people, trying to only look out for themselves.
There is also the middle 1/3.  These are the ones who just go with the flow.  At the beginning of the season for example they are at the top 1/3.  When you are undefeated, when everyone is starting the game, going to be all league performer, they love the coach, the team, the school, the whole world!

But during the middle part of the season it isn't going so well.  That middle 1/3 now go to the bottom 1/3.  A person not starting anymore, goes to the bottom 1/3.  Your at the bottom of the conference race, they go to bottom 1/3.

Then you have the top 1/3.  These are the players that go out and give you all they have each day, they give you energy every day.

You must learn to build armor.  Protect yourself from the bottom 1/3, the people that talk negative, the school administration, maybe even your own team.  Don't bring that bottom 1/3 home with you.  Everything that you have done that day is going to be second guessed by the bottom 1/3 that day.

Key to remember to enjoy your coaching:
A.  Don't let the bottom 1/3 drain the life out of you.
B.  The middle 1/3 are interchangeable, they will go with the flow.
C.  The top 1/3 will always give you the energy on good and bad days.

Ask yourself who are you going to protect yourself from personally and professionally?
How are you going to do that?

Each of us have a strong voice and weak voice.  I was thankful that early in my life I was surrounded by people who taught me to believe in myself.  You have to master this ability to have a strong voice to stay at the top of any profession.  But each of us has a dark side that we have, that weak voice.  Things like I want to quit, I am horrible, I don't look good, we can't win, etc.

Ask yourself are you contributing to your players weak voice?
How can you help them build that strong voice?

So here is the trick, to know when this is happening to the player and give them a solution on the spot so that they can correct during each of their moments in their lives.  For example, I provide each of my players during a workout for example, when things are tough, I want them to ask themselves a better question.  I want them to listen to the weak voice, I don't want them to ask themselves bad questions, like why am I missing the shot?  Their weak mind will tell them dark things, like you are too slow, not quick enough, you don't want to be here, why are you here?  Instead, I want them to ask themselves a better question.  Such as, what can I do to make this basket?  Now their mind will listen to the strong voice, the one that is providing solution, it will come up with solutions, like shoot the ball higher, snap the wrist, quicker.

Our real goal is to provide our players with a belief in themselves.  We have to create conditions for them to do that.  We have to give them a blue print to follow.  We must convince them when they can't see yet.

I know each of us have done this in some form or fashion, you probably didn't realize it, but you were giving your players a blue print for how to handle things, like the creating of belief in the pressure moments:  Something like this has gone on in each of your locker rooms.

We have been here before.  This helps your players reflect on the past and to know what each of them do well.
You are here again.  Reminding them of their good , why they have earned the right to be proud of where they are at.
Now let's go out there and show them.  Let's have some fun.  Giving your players the right to belief, and know that everyone will celebrate on the other side of reaching this success.

I also spoke in one of the earlier blogs as well about failure and how much of a role I believe it played into each of my practices, learning from it daily.  We as coaches get comfortable talking about winning no problem, but we can't really talk about the failures with such ease.

I wanted to make sure that each day in practice there was a built in disadvantage in practice where we were going to have to focus on failure recovery.  We had to learn how to handle it, not only by being placed in difficult situations but to each other, by saying my bad, next play, and perhaps a fist pump to signify that we are moving on, teammates saying, we got you.

I used a 2 minute drill in practice where there was going to be a clear failure recovery system in place and the pace would just dictate day to day who was feeling better, who shot better, attrition was in place, you name it.  If you want more details just email me and I will send to you:  Coach Saintignon email

The last thing I want to leave you with is the notion of leaving a lasting legacy.  We all hear of this?  What is it?  You know that we each get a sentence out of our life that will be summed up by our players.  Think about someone who has died, and you walk up to them and ask them who was it, they will give you and entire life of that person who lived, summed up into one sentence.  Coach Bob, he was a great coach.  So you get the idea, we only get one sentence.

I have been on the journey.  You will be remembered by how you treat those players that were under your supervision.  How you think, act, speak, that is your pattern of behavior.  That becomes your character and thus your legacy.

What's your sentence going to be?

Coach Saintignon
OC Magic Basketball

Volunteering

I had the honor of being able to volunteer at my son's high school, Mater Dei High School to assist in a wonderful program that they offered which was called Senior Interviews.  It is a huge undertaking requiring parents to come and volunteer to sit and listen to a senior who is in professional dress and must come to the table to personally interview with you.

Each senior would have 6 minutes to answer questions, then move into the next 4 minutes to have dialogue, tell them how they did, or have the student ask questions.

These students came prepared, resumes to hand in, professional dress.  The firm handshake, the eye contact, the appearance all provided a great first impression.  I have always told our athletes that you only have 7 seconds to make a great first impression.

I wanted to not just ask questions of the students, I wanted them to share with me their story.  I wanted to convey to them that upon interviewing that when they left the interview that I wanted them to have felt that they at least were able to share their story and walk out of the interview satisfied with that.

Fantastic sharing of their stories came out, each of them had a Hero's Journey to share at some point during the interview.

Yesterday was my turn to be interviewed on the Fireside Chat with the special invitation of Bryce Brown who I had the honor and privilege of recruiting as a student athlete.  I have said as a coach, you never know what impact you have as a coach until 10 years later when you see those that were under your supervision and seeing what they are doing with their life.  Did they use basketball as a tool to get an education?  Are they using those skills now in their professional lives.  He most certainly is.

Listen in :  Fireside Chat with Coach John Saintignon

After this broadcast, I had to turn around and complete a full day of helping students, by being an Ambassador for the University of California at Santa Cruz at the Anaheim Convention Center.  It was a great time to this time answer questions from students, parents, event some administrators within the Anaheim School District about the University of California, admission requirements, what it is like to live on campus, how far away from Orange County, what is the most popular major, but the best question I received was this.  Will UCSC bring out my inner voice?  This was someone who wants to be able to share their story.

Take the time to reach out and volunteer, you will be amazed by what you gain by offering your time!

Pursue your Passion!

Coach John Saintignon
Orange County Magic Basketball

What do you want your child to get out of the sport?

We all want to have our son/daughter be the highest performing player.  But I want to ask you, what do you want them to get out of the sport?

What do you believe your role is as a parent to help them?

I wanted my sons to learn that there is adversity and to learn how to overcome.  Learning how to make adjustments along the way, find solutions.  But I wanted their character to be developed.  So I felt that the role I had to play was to reinforce that at home as well.

When I am watching or scouting a game, I watch the game within the game.  But most importantly, I watch what happens with the player, do they acknowledge others, are they happy to be playing, giving high fives, making eye contact with the coaches, the body language when they are taken out of the game and when they are being given instruction on the bench.

Ask yourself how much time are you talking to your child about being an athlete or being a better person?  Because when you address the person you are addressing the development of their character.  When you talk about them as an athlete, you are talking about their performance.

At our house, we keep it simple.  My parents, didn't care how many points I scored when I was playing, when I was at home, I was a son, a brother and I had responsibilities to keep up, regardless of how popular I was.  This provided me with a grounding, and a perspective that I pass along to my own sons.

I always pay attention to interaction, if they are acting too cool, or if they are enjoying being a kid and showing passion.  We try to remind them once in a while by placing notes in their lunches about how much we love them, how special they are, loving them as a person, not with what they do.  We also try to surround them with a close knit inner circle that cares about them as a person.  Their family, sensei's, teachers.  We also believe in having them talk to people, listen to people and to become problem solvers.

We want to raise our children with the understanding that we are here to serve, that we might perform fantastic in a play, in a competition, however, we are still just trying to become great young men and grounded and grateful for the opportunity.  I tell my players all the time to respect the game.  No player was born to play the game, they had to work at it, the minute they didn't treat the game or others with respect, the game spit them out.

Coach John Saintignon

Building people to win a championship

Winning Championships is going to take a dedication to building people along the way.

Start with a theme.  Do you have one?  I have used many:  One year I wanted us to be a unit, playing the same type of music, so I used one sound, one beat.  I went off of what an orchestra sounds like, so we kept trying to keep with that theme.  Another was coming to work every day.  So I had to figure out ways to get that done.

Punch in and punch out, time card, blue collar worker, hard hats, lunch pail, a stone cutter mentality.  You get the point.  This is what I talked about daily, but I also had to show our players the same.  I did this with companies as well, when I would walk in and show their employees how to get everyone to buy into what you are trying to establish.

I hear of every business, team, saying that we are building a culture?  We are changing the culture?  What does that mean?  How?  By making them work harder?  There has to be more to it?  For example we clocked in every day, even brought a hard hat to symbolize as well as having a rock at practice to show the process over and over again, to reinforce what the message was to be.  We even had our players clock in, with time cards, to let them know that we wanted no distractions upon entering the gym floor, prepare for what we were going to do for the day.

What's your theme for your team?

When I was recently in China speaking, I told the audience of coaches about the lunch pail and what it symbolized and why we chose to use it.  In the box, I know my own boys, like it when I write something in there from time to time or put a nice treat for them.  But I also know when you see the people with a lunch pail in their hand, they are going to work, blue collar, usually outside, tough conditions.

For my players, I would put things in their lunch pail to help them remember and feel good and reflect upon things that will help them during the season.  Like a bouncing rubber ball, to symbolize what I have been trying to promote to them all along, being resilient, having a next play mentality, bounce back!

We would as a staff, put in definitions so that our players would know what it meant, like Resilient:  Bounce back from Adversity, move to the next play.  And then images, of our own players if we had it, or others that we could find that would capture the moments.

You think you could use this with your team?  Your company and employees?

One of the best exercises that was ever given to me was by one of my college coaches during my senior season at UCSD.  I was struggling, trying to help others, to fit in, to not shoot too much, to get everyone else involved.  My coaching staff wanted me to shoot the ball more and score more points so that there would be a triple threat on the team and make us a difficult team to play against.  I was not sure how I was fitting in.  My coach told me to go back to my house during the break that was offered for 2 days and go back to the place where I fell in love with the game.  To remember the smell, the sights, the inner self talk, and it was just remarkable for me to do that.  It brought me a smile, it reminded me of why I loved the game, why I played it.  Needless to say, I returned for our December Tournament and was selected MVP of the tournament and helped our team to win the championship.

I tell my athletes and others when they struggling to put that in the lunch pail to remember what that is like, even though physically don't have to travel there, mentally can be done.

In closing, just ask your players/employees what they want to be remembered for?  Remember earlier I talked about in a previous post about the performance skills and moral skills that are necessary.  Have them decide which ones they would like to have, now you do the same.  What would you like to be remembered for as a coach?

See if you can begin at this moment before the season begins to write your own awards banquet speech using those character skills you chose.

Thank you all for the continued feedback.  Stay tuned more information coming by way of a video channel and podcasts, so much to look forward to!

Pursue your Passion.

Coach John Saintignon
Coach Saintignon
OC Magic Basketball Club
@stignon

Achievement, the truth.

Are you like the many who believe that reaching success brings you happiness?

All of us having something that is missing from our lives.  We think that if we achieve the hole will be filled up and we will feel better about ourselves.  We think people will look at us differently, or we are going to get to a level where we feel complete as a person.

But really what happens is the more success you have the more driven you become for the wrong reasons, you become unhappy.  Chasing the championship doesn't happen right away, so when you finally do win it all after taking years of work, you might reflect and think that you were looking at it the wrong way.

Achievement brought me for example, to think more about my purpose in life and what I was doing as a coach because once I began to win, it didn't fill the void of what I thought was going to come of it.  I thought I was going to feel differently.

You can get to a point of now what enters your mind.  You might think of a parade coming for you and really it's just back to getting ready for the next season all of a sudden.  You ask yourself, now what?

I read a book on University of North Carolina Soccer Coach, Anson Dorrance, who has won so many national titles, more than 20.  I read where after they win a title, a symbol that he gives his players, is a rose.  To symbolize that the feeling of winning the title won't last long.  Think back to your last achievement?  How long did that feeling last?

Sometimes you feel relief instead of joy.  I remember coaching under tremendous stress in the Middle East as I took a team that the ownership wanted me to get to the Playoffs, talk about pressure, I had just walked into this job.  I didn't have the luxury of training camp, of getting to know players, I was a replacement coach at the end of the year, fixing the problems left by the prior coach who was just fired and trying to get us into the playoffs.  I did succeed, but I remember the feeling of happiness for everyone around, but for me was relief.  I couldn't enjoy the feeling that I should have been experiencing until the end of the season upon reflection as to what was accomplished.

Sometimes we will tie happiness to our level of achievement.  Like getting caught up in winning instead of getting to know our players.  Like winning back to back titles.  I know that the way to really go about it, is to judge how you did by clearly knowing did you fulfill the potential of your team.  But we all know that's not what happens.

We get into comparing.  Like when you hear of announcers who say that this player just willed the ball into the basket, refused to lose, there are a number of these lines that all announcers use from time to time.  Sounds great, but as a coach and a player listening, you think to yourself, what sometimes I want to win? Sometimes don't?  I want to will the basket and refuse to lose as well.  That's the worst thing is to hear and start to get into comparisons.  You and your team have great drive and passion, but if you don't win the championship it's not a reflection of who you are as a person.

We can get focused on winning and not people.  Many times especially if you have been winning, the expectation will be for you to continue to win.  If you were number 1 you were supposed to win, if you don't win, you will be criticized for not winning.  The classic no win situation.  Focus on the development of your players and not on the winning.

You will enjoy the journey as you Pursue Your Passion!

Coach John Saintignon
Coach Saintignon
OC Magic
@stignon