Coaching Football's "Little Things"

As it draws near Thanksgiving and… the close of another football season for many of us… I read about the Pilgrim Fathers. They settled in America full of vision.

The first year they established a town. The next year they elected a town council. In their 3rd year the council proposed building a road 5 miles out into the wilderness for westward expansion. But, the townspeople decried it as a waste of time and money. This is amazing to me. Years before, these people had been able to “see” across oceans to new worlds. Now, they couldn’t see 5 miles down the road. What happened? The same thing that happens to a lot of us: they lost their vision. The question becomes… how can we keep our vision alive? There are 3 things we can do:

1)Keep your vision before you at all times. It says in the Bible to “write the vision and make it plain… that he may run who reads it” (Hab. 2:2).

2) Make sure the vision is yours— not somebody else’s. Because we want to appear sensible or practical, we too often ignore our God-given desires. Have you undertaken a career to please your parents or your spouse? That will make you dutiful, but it won’t necessarily make you successful. And, it most likely will make you miserable! It is very difficult to fulfill a vision that is not your own.

3) Believe in yourself (even when others don’t!) and trust in God. You may succeed if nobody else believes in you, but you will never succeed if you don’t believe in yourself. The Bible says that “we labor in vain IF God doesn’t guide us in building the house” (my paraphrase). The Bible also says to “seek first the kingdom of God and… He will direct your path” (Matt. 6:33).

Pearl Buck once wrote, “The young do not know enough to be prudent, therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it generation after generation.” No matter how old you are, stay young at heart! And… keep your vision alive!!!

A coach, whose team is play-off bound next week, asked me about “travel plans.” He’s going to make a bus trip that’s over 3 hours to the opponent’s school. He wanted to know what kind of itinerary he should plan.

First off, I’m a firm believer in consistency. Some coaches would call it “repetitious” or “boring.” I call it security! Ask most people and they’ll tell you— they do not like change. There’s nothing wrong with throwing a different drill into the Individual period once in a while or going live for a few minutes to pep things up in practice. But… players like to KNOW what’s going to happen. The best evidence I’ve seen to confirm this is the number of players who stop at the bulletin board before getting dressed to study the daily practice schedule that I post every day. They want to know what the schedule looks like.

Sooooooo… with that in mind— I feel the same way about traveling to a game. I want us to have a “routine” that is not disturbed. If we travel the day of the game during the regular-season, I want to travel on the day of a play-off game. We’ve tried the “drive up the day before and spend the night in the motel” deal and it just didn’t work. Kids are kids! They’re away from home and some of them may not have slept in a motel before. It’s just a major upheaval that can easily take their minds off of preparing properly for the game. We did it last year and everything went relatively well. I’m not sure that most 16-17 year old boys can handle the situation as well as our kids did, though.

My suggestion to this coach who contacted me?

Spend your money on a charter bus instead of motel rooms and restaurant food. Motor up the morning of the game… even if you have to leave at “0-dark:30” to get there. They’ll sleep part of the way and then you can show a football/sports movie the rest of the way. We’ve watched Remember The Titans and Rudy. this season. There are others. I think we’re going to do The Miracle on Saturday when we travel to Northern Virginia for our play-off game. We have the moms prepare deli sandwiches for every player. We’ll stop at a Rest Stop and eat there and continue on in to the game site. Parents want to help out— just ask!

Good luck to all of you who are in the play-offs!!! Let me know how you do.