I don’t yell much at the players that I coach, but sometimes it’s necessary. We are in the middle of District Playoffs and after my recent pre-practice talk on No Regrets and being intense in practice, I had two girls walk to our first drill. I was not happy.
I blew the whistle and went “old school.”
“On the baseline!” I yelled. “A set of lines!”
The first set of lines was ugly. The girls finished and then trotted to grab some balls for Scramble Passing. I snapped. In the past my daughter, who is one of my players, has told me that when I raise my voice and get after them in practice she smiles on the inside because she knows me well enough to know that I’m not really mad, that I’m just trying to pick up the energy in practice. This time I was mad.
“On…the…line!”
I got after a couple of players. My blood boiled. They have all worked too hard to let their dreams die without a fight.
Part of me wanted to keep going with more lines. I’ve seen it done before, even been that person on the line running, tired and angry. Fired up. But two lines was enough and we finished our practice with more intensity.
Part of sports, and part of life, is learning to push yourself when things are tough. We have a sign inside our locker room door that reads LEAVE IT ALL ON THE COURT, because if you do that, give every once of energy when you are on the basketball court or toward a goal in life, win or lose you can have no regrets.
You have me pumped up.