WATCHING OUT FOR EACH OTHER
Attitude and team spirit are two of the things that have the most effect on whether or not a sporting team is successful. Talented teams can suck if these things are bad. Mediocre teams can achieve far greater than the sum of their parts if these things are good.

A local weekly, The Chronicle, celebrated its 1000th issue this week. In his column, the editor/founder reminisced quite, which is understandable given the circumstances. Among the memories, he made an excellent point. He noted that so much in life flows from the simple choice that we all make: whether to be a fundamentally positive person or a fundamentally negative person. And he's right on.

The soccer program I coach at his four teams. Traditionally, or at least in the last few years, the top team in that pyramid has had players with crappy attitudes which has led to non-existent team spirit. Not coincidentally, I'm doubt if they've won 10 games in the last 4 years. It's so bad that a friend of mine told me he was going to quit that team because his teammates were showing him such overt disrespect. As both a player and a coach, I know that little can be achieved if the players don't respect each other. They don't have to be best buddies with each other (or with the coach), but they have to have a respectful working relationship. My friend feels this is totally lacking and he's right. A lot of his teammates do have crappy attitudes.

I coach the team at the bottom of our program's pyramid and one of my missions has been to reverse that rot. The negativity at the top has served for me as an anti-model, ever since I got involved with the program. It's something the other middle school coach also believes strongly in. I think the head coach at the top of our program also believes in it but, since it's his first year in charge, it's a challenge for him to try to reverse the rot immediately without expelling 3/4 of his team.

With that in mind, an interesting event occurred in my practice today. (Bearing in mind that I coach 12-13 year olds). During practice, two or three of the kids came over to me and said, "Hey coach, something's wrong with so-and-so. We asked him what's wrong and he said nothing, but he's crying." So I went over, took the kid aside and talked to him for a while. "I'm so tired it hurts," he said. And, after I calmed him down, he went on to explain that he gets out of school and immediately comes to soccer. Then two days a week, he goes to karate immediately after. Then he goes home and does homework.

Now, I don't think this had anything to do with the particular practice I was running because we were just doing light warmups when this happened. But I talked to him, spent several minutes trying to calm him down and get him just to breathe and relax. I told him that if he was so tired it hurts from all his activities, something is not right and I made him promise to talk to his mom and dad. I have to follow up with him tommorrow to make sure he did.

But later on, I remembered to thank the kids who pointed so-and-so's situation because with the fast pace of warmups, it's not something I would necessarily have noticed. I'm also going to mention it again tommorrow how proud I am of them. Myself and the other middle school coach have talked a lot about being one team, about how we have to support each other, about how these are the guys you are going to be your teammates for the next six years. Those kids have taken it from the realm of theory and put into practical application. One of their teammates had something wrong and they let me know. They didn't tease or make fun of him, they were truly concerned. They were watching out for each other. That's what good teammates do for each other. I'm happy that they've bought into this philosophy. I hope they continue.