Personal Coaching and Leadership Philosophy

Personal Coaching and Leadership Philosophy: Bellefonte High School Football
Patrick McDermott

Master’s in Coaching and Athletics Administration, Concordia University Irvine

MCAA 510 – Principles of Coaching and Leadership

Professor William Harris

December 13, 2020

Philosophy of Coaching

At the core of any successful program lies a holistically based philosophy of coaching comprised of various essential parts. In order to effectively coach, train, and – most importantly – lead a group of athletes, a coach must have a well-defined mission statement, vision statement, and set of core values to act as the scaffold upon which the program is built. These elements build a framework that allow the coach and program as a whole to remain on track in pursuit of their commonly held goals regardless of outside factors that might be creating adverse conditions for the team. In short, these statements and values act as a compass that keeps the program headed in the right direction and are especially important in times of adversity. These elements as they pertain to the Bellefonte High School football program will be outlined below.

Mission Statement

The mission statement of the Bellefonte High School football program is: “The Bellefonte High School football program will develop leaders for the future through the relentless pursuit of academic, athletic, and community success.” As a high school program, academics must always remain the top priority; at the high school level, athletics are a vehicle to promote academic success and the ordering of Bellefonte Football’s goals in the mission statement reflects that. Involvement in athletics allows students to develop many skills that can be applied throughout their lives and the pursuit of success on the field helps to enhance these positive lessons. Finally, the program will be committed to giving back and serving its community throughout the year. Not only will these community service opportunities provide valuable lessons for athletes, but they will also allow the program to give back to various community groups that support the team each season. At the end of a player’s career at Bellefonte, he will be prepared to positively impact his community as a leader.

Vision Statement

The vision statement of our program is: “Bellefonte Football will pursue championships on the field and empower young men to be leaders of positive change off it.” Every athletics program wants to win and Bellefonte Football is certainly no different. But the program will commit to going about that pursuit of excellence while putting equal emphasis on the positive development of its athletes. This dual-headed approach differentiates the Bellefonte Football program from others and signals to those inside and outside the program what the team’s goals are about.

The Bellefonte Football program’s vision statement will be put into action throughout the year by exercising both components included within it. There is no off-season to building a successful team on the field and there are no breaks when it comes to creating positive leaders within your program; both of these elements will be pursued concurrently. What will set Bellefonte Football apart from other programs will be the conviction that team success and individual growth can be achieved at the same time without sacrificing one of the two components. In fact, the program will emphasize that on-field success is a direct result of individual growth as leaders and citizens. Athletic success, academic success, growth as a leader, and growth as a positive member of the community are not separate goals that compete for an athlete’s time and energy. Instead, they will be presented as parts of a larger whole, each contributing equally to individual and team accomplishments. The team’s vision statement is concise, clear, and memorable, making it a powerful tool in the day-to-day commitment to improvement in all areas throughout the program.

Core Values

Core values serve as the anchors upon which your athletes, coaches, and other stakeholders can rely. These values represent ideals that can take a program to the success proposed through its vision statement – when everyone commits to these values, success on and off the field will be realized. Within the Bellefonte Football program, these core values will be considered non-negotiable and essential to bring success now and to sustain it in the future. These core values show that the Bellefonte Football program is driven by distinctive leadership through its emphasis on the total student-athlete experience, not solely the team’s on-field performance. The firm belief that great people and great students create great football teams is one that sets Bellefonte Football apart from its conference opponents. Each of the core values listed below will improve the Bellefonte Football team and sustain success in future years. Perhaps just as importantly, they can each be applied to each athlete long after his football-playing days end, keeping in line with the program’s overarching goals to create positive leaders for years to come.

Commitment to the Team

All successful programs embrace the concept of accountability. The Bellefonte Football program will emphasize this through its first core value, “Commitment to the Team.” This commitment can be expressed in multiple ways. First, athletes will commit to being present at all team practices, workouts, and other functions and will commit to living by the program’s rules and values. But perhaps more importantly, each athlete will commit to the team by remembering that each individual’s actions will either build up or break down the team. This commitment is a dedication to do things the right way and to commit to one’s teammates to not let them down. This core value will serve to build trust and respect between players and coaches and – arguably even more importantly – between the players themselves through the creation of a culture of accountability. Once instilled, this value would likely become stronger over time as current players take ownership of the commitment to team and pass this mindset down to younger players in future seasons. As an athlete-driven value, it has the opportunity to be highly influential with younger athletes.

Commitment to Individual Growth

While the Bellefonte Football program places the utmost emphasis on team success, those goals cannot be reached without individual athletes committing to improving themselves. As with the mission statement and vision statement, improvement and growth within this core value encapsulates all elements of the student-athlete experience, not simply his performance in football. The program strives to enhance an athlete’s academic and leadership skills in conjunction with his football-specific skill set, which is an approach that is in line with the program’s vision of holistically improving each athlete. Members of the team will be expected to work as hard in the classroom as they do in the weight room and to engage in community service with the same passion they experience when hitting the field on Friday night. The program will be able to identify long-term success when goals are achieved on the field, in the classroom, and in the community on a regular basis.

Positive Mindset

In some ways, coaching student-athletes boils down to teaching them how to embrace a growth mindset. Athletes should be urged to relentlessly strive for improvement and this effort is most successful when paired with positive affirmations and encouragement. Coaches ask a lot of their athletes regardless of the sport and they must balance these demands with an outlook that keeps the game fun, fresh, and motivating. While the Bellefonte Football program will require its athletes to give their teammates and coaches all that they can, those athletes will be loved and cared for with a program-wide positive mindset and outlook on the future. The athletes must also commit to this value; nothing is as toxic to a program as negative teammates. Things are rarely – if ever – easy for any team and it can be difficult in tough times to maintain a positive outlook. But those tough times are exactly when positive outlooks are most crucial, and for this reason, the Bellefonte Football program will hold this core value in high regard for its ability to impact all facets of the team.

Courage

Playing any sport requires the core value of courage. Refusing to cut corners or settling for less instead of doing something the right way also requires courage. The Bellefonte Football program will not ask its athletes to do the popular thing or the easy thing. It will ask its athletes to do the right thing. This often requires courage to stick to the tougher path in the belief that better outcomes await than the easy way out might offer. This program is not designed to help its athletes ensure that they are doing the easy thing, the popular thing, or the thing that only advances the individual at the expense of others. This program is committed to supporting its athletes to do the right thing no matter what. Unfortunately, when dealing with teenagers doing the right thing often requires a measure of courage on the part of those athletes. It is not easy to play a sport and it certainly is not easy to play a sport in a program that places a high value on academic and community achievement in addition to winning on the field. In order for the Bellefonte Football program to be successful, it must be comprised of courageous athletes who have the fortitude to do what is right despite the external pressures to do otherwise.

Coaching Style

I think my coaching style is a blend of the transformational and cooperative approaches. Both styles emphasize giving student-athletes a voice in team decision-making, an outlook I support. It is my job as a coach to help the athletes learn the game and, ultimately, develop positive traits and learn life lessons through the game. The transformational and cooperative approaches allow me to help my athletes develop these skills by doing, not simply by listening to me lecture them. I think athletes need to learn how to make tough decisions, how to perform under pressure, and to learn how to respond appropriately to failure. Sports give athletes a tremendous training ground to experience all of these situations, and the utilization of a cooperative or transformational leadership style allows the coach to help the athletes further develop these skills. In the cooperative style, “coaches cooperate with their athletes by sharing the decision making” (Martens, pg. 29). This pairs well with the transformational model of leadership, in which the leader and other members of the group share the authority to make decisions. As a coach, these approaches match my personality well, making them comfortable styles for me to utilize. I also prefer them for the educational aspect they can provide athletes. As a “player’s coach,” I agree with the thought process of giving athletes a role in their development because it can allow them to take ownership of the team and I believe it can motivate them to achieving their potential (Noyes, 2020). Using these approaches require a coach to have confidence in his or her athletes to handle the added responsibility of decision-making and the coach must also be selfless enough to give up some of his or her control. This is not to say that the athletes make every decision, but allowing them to play a role in the decision-making process means the coach must be comfortable with his or her athletes having a more prominent voice. I have remained committed to doing what I thought was best for my athletes throughout my coaching career, and I think that using these approaches leads to better outcomes for them in the future. For these reasons, the cooperative and transformational styles are key components of who I am as a coach.

References

Martens, R. (2012). Successful coaching. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Noyes, K. (n.d.). MCAA 510 – One Size Does Not Fit All. Lecture. Retrieved December 13, 2020, from http://resources.cui.edu/courses/mcaa510/modules/12/story.html