This past couple of days I was on the road with the women's basketball team. Being team manager has given me the power of observing the sport from the outside, but from as close to the inside as one can be. I understand the players when they get upset about the little things or have problems with the coach or a game or a bad practice, or can feel it when tension builds or they give up because I have been through all that. What is most interesting to me though, is to hear all of it and be able to look at it in an objective way.
The girls got beat really bad yesterday at Purdue, and I could see it coming. It started with a bad practice in which the coach was yelling at the team and I could see them looking defeated instead of turning it around. The starting five on the team has just been switched and this has completely changed team dynamic. My roommate on the trip was sick and coach was not giving her any alternative options: she would go hard in pre-game and start the game. All of these little things were mounting and Purdue being the #6 team in the country was not going to help.
The coach has been making all of these decisions which change team dynamic, and I have come to realize that if I ever coach, I think that keeping the team together is the most important thing. Instead of seperating the players, everything has to be open and truthful and all adjustments should be explained. The best coach I ever had told the truth about everything. He would sit us down after every game and tell us what we did right and wrong. He always called everyone out individually and would announce to the team when he was going to make changes and why. This made it so the team always knew what was going on and so they were able to stay together through it all.
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My father spent most of his life working as a safety engineer and so was involved in writing a lot of instructions for workers using equipment. I remember him telling me how with especially delicate or dangerous equipment they would write really, really detailed instructions, for the users to follow to the letter. They realised though that if the users didn't understand why an instruction was important, they wouldn't follow it properly, and accidents would happen - they had to change their approach and educate the users on the equipment so that they could 'internalise' what was important, instead of just being told what to do.
There's an analogy here, yeah?
It sounds like Combs has just given up on the girls. While I know she must be frustrated that we still don't have a Big Ten win, the girls are obviosly trying hard. Taking out your best players to start bench players is possibly understanable if its just for a game. But for three in a row? The original starters still led the team in scoring and rebounding despite fewer minutes. Hopefully we can get a win against Michigan this sunday that will turn the season around (a little).
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