I have my annual goal-planning meeting with our rising senior football players tomorrow. One of the mom’s is nice enough to open her home and provide lunch for us.
Once we finish eating, we’re going to do some goal-planning for next season. Some things I’ll talk about: 1- Bo Schembeckler at U. of Michigan had a pretty important slogan: “The Team! The Team! The TEAM!” I’ll tell them that it’s important to have individual goals too but… they cannot supercede the Team goals. “BIG Team… Little me.” 2- I’ll point out that for something to be a goal, it has to be measurable. For example, it’s NOT a goal to say: “We want to play better next season.” How do you measure “play better?” They’ll need to re-word it to make it measurable. For example, it could be worded, we want to win 1 more game than last year. Or, we want to decrease our turn-overs on Offense and increase them on Defense. THAT’S measurable and explains what he means by “playing better.” 3- We want performance goals and we want attitudinal goals. One involves things we see happening on the field, like “Winning our Homecoming Game” and the other involves internal or mental goals; i.e., display team unity during wins and losses. 4- Finally, they need to have a time table. WHEN do they expect to see these goals achieved.
I will give them paper to write down 3 Performance goals and 3 Attitude goals. I will ask them to include the “steps to acheive” them. They’ll have 5-10 minutes to complete this. We’ll then start brainstorming the different goals that the seniors present. I’ll come up with a list of both types of goals that we settle on. They will then be placed on a big poster (3 ft. X 5 ft.) on the team room wall. I want everyone to see it every time we have a meeting. I will talk about goals numerous times during the season and point to the poster as my reference.
