There Is Always An Excuse

A few months ago, I chatted separately with two captains that took their teams to the same tournament. At this tournament, it poured rain on Sat, and was nice on Sun. One of the teams did very well on Sat, but not so well on Sunday. This captain said to me "I wish it had kept raining on Sun!". The other captain said to me "We underachieved and the rain on Sat was a big part of the problem".

To me, there are several layers of problems here:

1) Teams embrace the uncontrollables- There might not be a better example of an uncontrollable than the weather, and I hear teams frequently making excuses for poor play based on the conditions. I have done it myself as well. In 2001, I captained a team that might have been the best conditioned team I have ever played with. What we lacked in talent (which was a lot), we made up for in conditioning. We went to Nats that year, and guess what....it was REALLY windy. Well, needless to say that conditioning was not really a factor, and I found myself saying later "I think we would have run teams into the ground if it wasn't windy". Part of dealing with uncontrollables is being prepared (read: process goals). I recall hearing that in 2001 that BRU (made finals) spent time practicing their zone offense against a 8 man zone and did not allow passes over head height. This was while my team was running shuttle runs. There is a big mental part of this as well. When it is cold, rainy, and windy, I say to my girls " The team that enjoys playing in the cold, wet rain the most will have success today". So, it is a matter of being prepared, but also not letting the conditions be a mental road block for success, or, in the case of the first captain in my example, a necessity for success.

2) Play like you predict- If your team believes that it must be raining for you to have success, then you will play as such. This is really the same as the mental component that I mentioned above. When I first started working at Wellesley, I frequently heard "We're not a morning team", or "We're not a first half team". These aren't options anymore, and we have actually have the following as process goals: get to tournaments early, and warm-up well.

3) Unrealistic self-assessment- How often have you heard the following: "we finished 10th in 02, picked up some talent, finished 7th in 03 and 04, picked up some talent and would have done better in 05, but ________ (we had injuries, it was rainy/windy/sunny). At some point, the sight has to be turned on oneself and a candid self-assessment is needed. There is always an excuse for underachieving, but each of us is never the problem...it is the other guy. After years of finishing 9th at Nats, I finally realized that "maybe the team that I am capable of 'starting' on is not talented enough to make semis at Nats". A few months later, I had the opportunity to be a role player on 6TM, and we made semis that year.

4) Better goals- Every team says "we finished x last year, this year we have upgraded the talent, and we are looking forward to making noise at (sectionals, regionals, nationals)". Easy to say...hard to do. Especially without good goals (especially process goals). I have talked about goals enough in my posts, but in order to get over the hump of excuses and embracing uncontrollables, you need to set very good and detailed goals for yourself and your team.