Coaching Tip of the Month

Coaching Tip - February / March, 2004

Leave a Coaching Legacy

Know yourself, develop your unique talents and serve others has been my personal and professional mantra for some time. To use this means:

Know yourself - identify your strengths and weaknesses then develop an action plan to build on those strengths and overcome weaknesses. This growth plan is a process and takes time.
Develop your unique talents - every coach has a special personality and unique coaching style. Be yourself (some say become your best self) and don't try to evaluation some famous coaching style or personality. No one should or will be able to coach as you do - this is your coaching legacy.
Serve others - ultimately, the coaching profession at it's best is about service. Coaching/teaching is about helping others to develop - physically, psycho-socially and emotionally. When the effectiveness of your coaching is measured, it will depend on the development of your players in basketball but more importantly, as future citizens and leaders (person power). After all, relationships will matter most.

One way to ensure your coaching legacy or specific imprint upon your players is to develop a special basketball passion. Mine has been fundamental skills - the players and teams I have coached are acutely aware (sometimes painfully so) of my positive/insistence upon basketball basics. They have literally heard me say "Capture and Chin the ball" hundreds, sometimes thousands of times during a career. What you teach and emphasize is what you get in coaching. Players notice/learn your emphasis/passion. Enthusiasm is caught and taught. Identify, develop and show your basketball passion. Your players will learn to remember and appreciate it. And it will become part of your coaching legacy; passed on and remembered by your players, hopefully as a positive factor in your lifelong relationships.

Coach Krause's Coaches Corner Archive

Coach Jerry Krause, 502 E Boone, Spokane, WA 99258