A Tradition of Excellence

Building a tradition of excellence doesn’t simply happen by accident. It takes strategy, care, love and most importantly - words spoken with grace and integrity. The most powerful words in a coach’s vocabulary are “I’m sorry.”

Every season as a track and field coach I felt the need to say those words. They came out from time to time in training, in competition and at times at the end of a long season. I was fortunate enough to be part of some amazing teams. Four out of five seasons at Slaton High School we competed at the State Track Meet in Austin. Some years we came home with hardware and others we fell short. Every year the girls gave everything they had and trusted me to lead them in the process.

As a leader I’ve screwed up a lot. Each season there was something I felt like I could have done better. The middle of May was always comprised of me sitting down and rummaging through our practice plans for the year assessing where I missed excellence on paper.

Questions plagued my days and nights.

Did I help keep the athletes healthy?

Did I push hard enough at the right times?

Did I allow space for them to breathe and reset?

Was I clear with our goals and who we were?

Did I help foster an environment of growth? Love? Compassion? Excellence?

Was there daily reminders of what they could do and pushing them beyond their own capacity when it was time?

Did we pursue our edges?

A thousand questions flow through my mind as I look back on these teams. From the first 2015 season to our last season together, cut short by COVID. These girls helped me understand myself more fully. They helped me understand who I was and encouraged me with their trust. Coaches ask what they can do to get athletes to buy-in. My answer is a simple one in words and a terribly difficult one in practice.

Invest in the person as an individual, reminding them of who they are, not who people tell them they could be. This can only be done through relationship and vulnerability on the coaches part. It’s an art. A skill underdeveloped in the coaching world.

If you want to lead well and create a program of excellence, it starts with your willingness to admit when you’ve failed them. It’s okay to fail your athletes. It’s unacceptable to not let them know you’ve failed.

Step into the space of leadership with the willingness to say those powerful words, “I’m sorry.”.

What you’ll probably find is the athletes rarely feel as though you failed them but rather they have failed. When an athlete sees a coach genuinely and authentically take responsibility for the teams failures, it reveals a commitment to them on a deeper level. BUT… they only trust those words when the relationship is there. Deep investment leads to deep commitments. I was committed to their success even when they weren’t. I didn’t hold it over their heads when they were being a typical 16 year old kid. Those were the times to remind them they belonged with the best, the fastest, the greatest in the state whether they performed like it or not.

Their performance didn’t change the way I felt about them because who they were was not dictated by how good they were at their sport. Who they were was within them. And damn they were great.

For all of the athletes I’ve coached… thank you for the joys of success and the grief that comes from a hard loss. The joys and the grief, when learned from, creates the culture we were able to create.

It was a culture of excellence.