Perspective

We should be able to talk candidly about our coaching perspective.  We all can agree that if we have a player who is driven, you must realize that you are in a position of power.  They will do anything you say.  They also will accept abuse in anyway that you deliver it because they desperately want the success.  

When you have those players that are extremely driven they are the ones that are most at risk, because they are the ones willing to do anything, sacrifice everything and do whatever is necessary and take whatever you dish out to them because you hold the key to what they are seeking! 

If you get players into survival mode as I stated earlier in another blog, then you will have them fighting like dogs.  That anger subdues choking, it subdues fear.  That chemistry of fear and anger can't live together.  Some coaches believe that if you make the player angry that they will then play better.  You can call them names, infuriate them and all the nerves go away, that's what the screamer coaches realize.  It's manipulation as opposed to allowing them to figure things out and how to control their own nerves.  

Is there a different way? 

Humans tend to perform much better when they are driven.  When they see the opportunity to do something extraordinary for a cause much bigger than themselves.  They respond in a special way when they realize all of their hard work and suffering isn't about them anyway.  

Great coaches know this power, the power of fighting for a loved one.  They do it for a cause that is more than their own validation, or their own self interest and thus more sustained results.  

Coach Wooden was very tough.  He was a taskmaster.  However, he always had his players best interest in mind.  It was never about him.  It was about the players and what he did with them, how he taught them, would affect them the rest of their lives.  

This is what he told me how he would determine what a success he had been later in life, 10 years from the time that they left his supervision. 

The real report card.  This is when the season is over.  As much as all of us want to be at the top and accepting the championship.  The real sense of satisfaction is going to come later.  Like at the reunion, the wedding of a player, etc.  This is where you know it was a truly meaningful experience, one that shaped their lives and that they are grateful for.  It's at this moment where you will not feel any better as a coach.  

Sometimes the job gets in the way however.  We just get into the mode of winning games.  We forget how to value moral character.  How can you prove you value character if you don't measure it and reward it everyday?  How could you implement into your practice today?  Start by recognizing that person that was most unselfish, encourages the most and reward that person.  That person doesn't have to run at the end of practice for example because this was measured, rewarded.  The players will see that this is a value to you and they will try their best to achieve it.  

During one Final Four that I attended, I heard a coach say to another, "You can tell what a coach values by what they are willing to lose for."  So true because we are always afraid of what can happen if we don't get the wins.  We are tested each day.  How much do I value winning and how much do I value developing people?  

This comes back to your perspective.  Are you playing for today?  Or are you playing for a perspective that is going to ultimately determine the success of those under your supervision as a person.  

Ask your players:  How can you tell if a coach values winning over developing people?  I am interested in learning what you discover?

Pursue your Passion! 

Coach John Saintignon

Orange County Magic Basketball

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

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

What do people remember?

Let me tell you, many coaches just don't really pay attention to this side of the game.  But I want you to at least think of how these questions pertain to you and pertain to your athletes.

Ask yourself, do you feel like your identity is tied to your results?  Like if you play well, you feel good.
Do you see results out of your control?
Do you see how you are allowing something that is outside of your control to affect the way you feel about yourself as person?

Most of us will have answered this with a yes.  This is where we can begin.  On common ground to discover truly what people remember.

Ask yourself now who was the leading scorer in the NCAA 3 years ago?
What is the name of your favorite teacher?
Why did you pick that teacher?

You discovered like many of us, we don't know who the leading scorer was in our own sport!  That is a common answer.  But each of us can pick that special teacher.  Usually because the teacher got to know the student.  There are many responses that can be had, see if you think of any of these?  Supportive, got to know me, made learning fun, challenged me, helped me.  Sound familiar?

What was the purpose of those questions?  Who was the leading scorer, favorite teacher, how come you picked them?  It's a reminder.

What do people forget?
What do people remember?

1.  People forget stats.
2.  People remember who you were as a person.

How do you want to be remembered?

Value the person more than the player.  Our identity, if it's tied to you as a player then you will feel dejected if you miss the shot.  If the identity is in yourself as a person, then you will be able to show how to bounce back, how to use the adversity.  Totally different way of approaching and looking at it.

Focus on Character skills:  There are Performance skills and moral skills.  Pick a few.  Performance skills such as to name a few:  hardworking, resilient, competitive, positive, etc.  Moral skills such as:  unselfish, trustworthy, respectful, caring, etc.

Ask yourself can these skills be developed?

What about the performance skill you selected, if you developed it, would it make you a better player?
What about the moral skills you selected, if you developed those, would it make you a better teammate?
If you grow these skills it actually makes you a better player and teammate which will lead to better results.

Let's not forget that developing the character of our athletes is more important than the play they run, or the points they score.  If you focus in on the character development, you will get better results.  The players want the better results, what you as a coach have to develop is the Character Development to help them get there as well as the skill development.

Give this some serious thought.  What are your thoughts?

Coach John Saintignon
John Saintignon
Orange County Magic Basketball
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What players on a team think?

Yesterday, I had a great conversation with several of our coaches on Orange County Magic who are navigating their respective High school teams and their formation and organization challenges that are going to come up.  How many players to keep on a team?

Now each coach has their own perspectives on their formation of their teams and why they do what they do.  I personally didn't want to carry more than 12 players.  I wanted the team to have enough to count on each other, keep rooming lists even, and to make sure that I had the 12 that were committed to the team.  But there are some interesting ideas as it relates to this as I posed with my experience in High School and then going to the PAC-10 conference where I heard this term, minutes.

Before I go into that, I want to share with you what I shared with Coach Sean and Coach Ron.  Some questions that I asked them to ask of their players.  I did this when I was a high school coach and also with my individual meetings with players in the PAC 10 and my professional teams abroad to get my own perspective so that I could get to the heart of things as we entered into the season.

Teams are fragile.  If for example you carried 12 players as was usual with my team, here is what I discovered, see if this is true with your own experiences?

Players 9-12 want to play.  Players 6-8 want to start.  Players 4-5 want more shots.  Players 2-3 want to be the best player.  And the best player wants to play at the next level.  This was true of my high school teams, NCAA Division 1 and 2 and of course, even my professional teams abroad.

There is nothing wrong with this as you have been teaching your players all along to want more, to strive.  It becomes a problem when it outweighs the teams needs.  You know everyone needs to sacrifice for your team to be successful.  Your players need to see this and feel that they are part of the solution.

Here is how I got to the heart of the matter.  Try this.  Ask your players these questions and see what you discover.

1.  How many minutes will you average this year?
So of course, this varies if you are a high school coach because the maximum amount of minutes that you can hand out is 160 minutes (5 players x 32 minute game), if you are a college or overseas coach the maximum you can hand out is 200 minutes ( 5 players x 40 minute game).  Ask your players this question, how many minutes will you average this year and then add up all those minutes.  I usually discovered about 300 minutes was the norm.  OK,  that was impossible.

2.  Next question that I would ask.  Will you start?
In basketball you can only start 5 players, but the responses were usually around 9 players who believed they should or would start.  Again impossible.

3.  How many points are you going to average?
When I added this up, we were always going to be the highest scoring team in the country, :).  I tell you.  Usually added up to nearly 160 points per game.  Again not impossible, but you know.

What this proved to me and my coaching staff was that we needed to really address the players that sacrifices were going to have to be made by all, roles were going to have to be embraced and rewarded, recognized by the coaching staff.

This type of early discussion allowed everyone to feel that they had a role and an important part that was going to be rewarded and recognized.  These were daily efforts on our behalf to make sure we paid attention to all these little details in terms of player relations on and off the court to make sure we were centered and ready to drive toward our goals together as a team.

Before the other distractions come, you know outside expectations :)

Here is Coach Bill Parcells, I know it's a football hall of fame speech, but the message is clear about the locker room, the sacrifices that a team makes, why it is special and how winners and losers handle things.  Enjoy.

Bill Parcells What Makes a Team Great

Let me know your thoughts.  I love hearing from you.

Coach John Email

Pursue your Passion!

Coach John Saintignon
John Saintignon
Orange County Magic Basketball

There is always a solution

I begin this post with the notion that there is always a solution.  It is too easy for many to just say no.  Ideas get shot down by people who just don't want to think outside the box, so they say no.  But the true discovery comes when you are open to finding a solution, to be curious, to not settle, to find a way.  This weekend, I was at my son's Karate tournament and I am going to share a story about being resilient and helping others find a solution.

As tournaments go in the world of sports they are difficult to put on and conduct regardless of whatever sport it is.  Karate tournaments require a coach, require focus with all the distractions of music, performances, and generally people in the stands or walking around, excitement, cheering, you name it, it's all there.  These tournaments last the better part of the day so there has to be a preparation beyond the physical as there is a mental component attached as well.

Here is the story that I want to share with this weekend with my youngest son, Sebastian.  In this tournament my son was scheduled to compete in a kata and also sparring for his age group and black belt division.  No problem, there is a lot of competitors, there is musical form katas that are being performed, weapons, artistic, traditional, sparring, team, you name it.  There are also many rings in which to have these competitors perform, not to mention having to have usually 3 volunteer judges per ring.  Now there are also people that are on a microphone saying what ring for competitors to be at, each age division, each belt rank, there is also the music being played for those performing their routines with music, the people in the stands, cheering or watching, there are the other competitors so it can be easy to not hear all the time what is being said via loud speaker or via a judge who perhaps just saying something with his or her voice as to who should be at the next ring.  You get my point, there is a lot going on, many distractions.

Now at these events the members usually are represented by their coaches.  Which is a tremendous help as the role of a coach as I define it is to provide structure, guidance, encouragement but also to protect the athletes and be their voice especially in situations like this where there is a nervousness and anxiety with each and every athlete, regardless of the status of their belt.  In essence their leader.  This has always been the case with my son and his dojo.  However, not always the case in large tournaments like this can you pay attention to all the competitors as you are split between going to support one individual while maybe another is competing in another part of the arena.

Here is the teaching moment that presented itself to me this weekend with my son at this tournament and what I know we all want our children to be able to do.  My son was waiting 5 hours and had not been called up for one of his events, we sat near the ring where we thought that he would be performing along with entire team and never heard anything, so something must have gone wrong.  Did he miss the event and not hear it?  Did we all miss it and not hear it?  This is our responsibility, not anyone else. But here is the situation that is in front of us.  I am agitated that this has occurred as this is not the only time that this has happened at one of these tournaments, keep in mind that we have been doing these for years and this happens frequently to many competitors.  With so much going on, you can see how things like this can and do happen often.

I want my son to learn to be responsible and to discover for himself what happened. He is young, scared and not really sure what to do, but I want him to go and explore nonetheless.  I sent him to talk to someone at the desk, the announcer who can perhaps give him an answer.  Sebastian, tells him the situation and the response was that it was called, you missed it.

OK, I then tell him to go and find the Shihan that is in charge of the event, he goes to locate and doesn't find.  Next solution is to find his coach and have him go with you to discover what happened and again told that it was called and missed.

Now, I am deciding how can I provide a teaching moment for my son.  I take him with me, we both walk to the gentleman that was at the desk, I tell him that I wasn't looking for a refund, that I just wanted to find a solution and that one was to locate an empty ring, find 3 of the volunteers to sit there and judge the young man on his kata which is what he came to do.  No awarding of a trophy, none of that matters.  I just wanted to help find a solution other than leaving the site with a refund and a waste of time and a bad taste.  This was done.  My son was nervous as he could tell again that I was agitated but what I don't like are when adults are not always willing to find a solution.  It's too easy to just say no, there was no added time, pressure or responsibility that was to be put on any of the judges or the Shihan of the event as I did not want to get the refund as was suggested, all I wanted was to have Sebastian perform and get his opportunity to do that.

The teaching point that I wanted to impart was to show my son that there is always a solution, sometimes you have to help guide others by providing them with the option so that they can realize that it's not going to inflict any additional time, commitment, or pressure on them.  We then had to turn into a very diligent athlete, I had him ask question after question as to where is the next event that he is to perform, what ring is that going to be in,  to then go to the table, turn in his competitor card, and ask again and again is this where it is going to be at.  Now, how to provide the next teaching moment?

re·sil·ient

rəˈzilyənt/

adjective

1. (of a substance or object) able to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed.

   synonyms:

   flexible, pliable, supple; More

   • (of a person or animal) able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.

   
   

The next event was sparring and Sebastian had to change his focus ASAP to able to get over what he just went through and stay in the moment, to recover quickly and bounce back.  This requires a bounce back mentality, next play, internal talking.  I wanted him to now focus on what was in front of him, big, quick, athletes who were taller.  A strategy that his coaches have provided him for years was now going to be needed to be heard.  He was going to have to rely on self talk to achieve the result of scoring points.  He did, he had a great event, finishing 2nd place in the sparring competition and left the building, satisfied that he was able to overcome and bounce back.  He was very pleased with his performance as was I.  

As a parent and as a coach that is what we are all looking for, teaching moments.  Pay attention to the teaching moments that present themselves and be prepared to teach on the spot so that your athlete can perform, feeling that encouragement, support, and guidance so that they can learn from you.  As a coach, as well as a parent, you are a role model.  We are here to help those who are under our supervision to help them perform and learn life lessons and to discover that there is always a solution.

Pursue your Passion! 

Coach John Saintignon

OC Magic

Coach John Saintignon

What is your master plan?

OK, so where do we begin the season?  How do we make sure that we are teaching our players all that they need to know for a successful season?  How do you stay on track?

You need to start.  You need to create a master plan so that you have a reference point to look at.  Really, to keep on track and stay on track.  Sometimes we as coaches tend to focus on a few things and run out of time during the season and don't cover something and wish we had.

I learned how to get this done as I was a high school coach and visiting clinics and hearing NCAA coaches at UNC and UCLA talk about it, but how did they put it together?  That was never shared?  How much time did they spend on things?  I asked them for information and dug deeper as I had a thirst for how to become the best coach that I could become.

Here is what I put together after gathering information from many coaches across the country.

Coach Saintignon Master Plan for Basketball

I used this especially during the season to make sure that I was staying on track.  One thing you will have to keep in mind is that you will always have to modify, adjust and adapt.  This is true in all things.

University of North Carolina Practice

Coach Bobby Knight Indiana University
*Please note that there are typos, this was a document sent to me, so I had no control over the spelling.

This gives you a little idea to help you during your season in your preparation phase.  Should anyone want more, please email me at johnsaintgnon@gmail.com and I would be happy to help in anyway that I can.

Pursue your Passion!
Coach John Saintignon
OC Magic
Coach John Saintignon

Winning, Losing, Results

So we are at that time of year where as a coach and player there is the talk about winning and losing and the results that are being produced is at the forefront of many discussions.  There are many things that can derail us as coaches, players that I want to see if I can remind to see if this helps a bit.

As I stated before all of us can get off the rails so to speak and get caught up in disappointment because of the thinking that we can win, or deserve more.  We can lose sight and turn away from what is most important during the course of the season.

We all experience success, we all have an ego that say we deserve this or that.  We believe that maybe we are talented enough that we can maybe take it easy here or there, ease up on some of the development that should be occurring or the training that should be happening.

One of my greatest moments of coaching was the time that I spent learning from Coach John Wooden.  As I was coming up and winning, thinking that what we did was a direct result of my teaching, etc., Coach spoke in parables, quotes, and with poems.  One in particular that has become my favorite that he usually recited to me to make his point, was "IF" by Kipling.  I was reminded that winning and losing were impostors.  To treat them both the same, according to Coach Wooden, he used to tell me that you are not as good as people say you are and your not as bad as they say either.  The players that you work with on a daily basis, they are why you coach.  They are under your supervision and are you giving them the attention that they deserve and not just only talking about winning or losing and the end game, the results.  Are you concerned with them as individuals as this is a short lived game, it doesn't last forever, but your relationship just might.

I began to change as a coach each time as I am sure everyone who came in contact with Coach Wooden, did change.  It's easy many would say coming from someone who won National Title after Title and UCLA with the best of the best.  But he was pointing out to all of those who looked for his advise, what was important.

I once had a team that I was playing against in a tournament, I believed that we were good, I saw that the talent level on the other side of the floor during warm ups wasn't that great and noticed that our own players thought that they were just going to run them over as well.  We weren't serious as a staff and also as players during the warm up.  I didn't address the situation as I should have right then and there, as a result, we ended up getting beat that night because we didn't approach the game the same as we would have had it been the championship round of the tournament.  We were the better team, only on paper that night.  I was so frustrated, furious as I knew we should have been better, I second guessed myself, took it out on the team, coaching staff, when I knew all along that it was my fault, period.  So to this day, I take every opponent serious, as all the championships that I have won as a coach, were formed during that lesson learned that night.

The bottom line is that when you experience success we all think that we can cut corners from time to time and still achieve the end result, the win.  Many of us get caught up thinking that we are bigger than the game.  This comes from us only focusing on winning.  We can get caught off the rails and make it so that we believe it's all about the X's and O's and not about the Jimmy and Joe's.

So ask yourself?  What are you doing each day to make your players better people.  Is your message only about the sport?  Only about winning?  There is much more to this than just getting the W.  That night we lost I should have addressed the importance of respect for each opponent and that we owed it to ourselves to give our best effort regardless of who we were competing against.

We can become consumed with winning.  We can forget about getting home to your significant others.  Your family, children.  We make up excuses that we don't have the same talent, we don't have the same facilities to compete with others.  We need to practice longer, stay in the office so others will notice that we are giving all to this team.  We can think that we need every advantage to achieve what we want and the thing that we usually sacrifice first is our family.

There are incentives to winning as well that have been placed, with bonus structures, raises, etc.  This has now become a performance based industry.  Including AAU.  Winning supports your ego, yes, it also allows for those players to come to your programs, which leads to them going to NCAA., which allows players to continue with your program.  So it's now come to this, winning is everything.  Here's the problem.  99% percent of us aren't winning the ultimate national championship in the sport.  So here's the question.  How do you want to be remembered?  Maybe the focus from winning should be to developing people.  And make that the national championship that you are trying to create.  Coach Wooden told me that he knew he did a good job, 10 years later, when those that were under his supervision, were doctors, lawyers, parents, businessmen, etc.

The lessons learned from sports are lifelong.  What lessons are you imparting to those under your supervision?  Make this season your best, use your own definition of the results your looking for.

I look forward to helping.

Coach John Saintignon
www.ocmagic.org
www.johnsaintignon.com

Getting to know Coach John Saintignon

The other day I had a meeting with someone to help with OC Magic and just talk and it was suggested that people might not even know who I am, so it led me to this discussion point.  Recently, I had an interview on a podcast that I am sharing with you about that very subject, who is Coach John Saintignon.

I hope that you enjoy listening in and learning more.



http://goldnetbasketball.podomatic.com/entry/2016-09-12T16_58_00-07_00



www.ocmagic.org

www.johnsaintignon.com