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Casting the Perfect Sports Coach: 10 Great Movie Coaches

Some of you know I’m a bit of a movie buff. I thought it would be fun to consider what the perfect movie coach might look like. Browsing the top 100 sports movies , one quickly realizes there are some great role models to choose from. To cast the perfect coach I have chosen 10 important qualities every great coach should possess. I would love to know your thoughts. Who do you think is the all-time best movie coach? Teacher – Ken Carter (Samuel L. Jackson) “Coach Carter” Coach Ken Carter knew what his athletes needed to succeed in both sports and life, and even more importantly, he got them to understand the value of education. Balancing athlete’s needs and wants is a difficult trick Coach Carter did well. Motivator – Norman Dale (Gene Hackman) “Hoosiers” Coach Dale inspired his players to accept their fears and shortcomings as they moved their small Indiana town toward an impossible dream. The geniuses of Coach Dale was his ability to create a common emotion of pride which ultima
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How to Get Your Dream Coaching Job: 6 Important Questions to Ask in an Interview

The beating of your heart sounds like a 21-gun salute. The droplets of sweat rolling down your back keeps reminding you not to doodle on the freshly printed resume sitting in your lap. Most of the coaches I have worked with would choose walking on hot coals as an alternative to interviewing any day of the week. The pressure and stress of interviewing for a new coaching position is one of those things every coach eventually must face. And, no one enjoys. In my positions as a coaching consultant and college professor, I am often working with younger coaches who are hoping to someday soon have their own program. Knowing that the job interview is the first hoop that must be jump through, I am frequently asked about the questioning process and what they should expect. My advice is simple; the coach who gives the best answers usually doesn’t get the job, the coach who asks the best questions usually does. Most administrators agree, the questions and scenarios they ask prospective co

#13 I am Born to Coach

This article marks the 13th, and final, installment for this series investigating the 13 Beliefs of Good Coaches . To conclude, I hope to highlight the personal nature of coaching, and discuss how the difficulties of the job often stem from our desire to emulate those individuals that coached us. “I was born to coach”. That was the first sentence I wrote for my doctoral dissertation , the culmination of a 9-month field study into the mechanics of the coaching process. My academic advisor almost spit coffee across the room when I handed her the first draft with those words as the opening line. Her insistence to the inappropriateness of beginning a scientific paper as weighty as a dissertation with such a personal statement let me know I was on the right track. Making such an audacious and bold declaration let everyone know where I was coming from. For me, coaching is one of the most personal things you can do. Coaching has shaped who I am, coaching will forever be a part of what I

#12 I am Powerful: 5 Ways to fight Like a Team

Recently, I posted a list of 13 Beliefs of Good Coaches . Now I’m following up by digging deeper into each of them. This post is about the twelfth belief: I am powerful, I have power over others; I can abuse that power and act like an ass. Who is John Douglas? I’m going to guess that some of my UK followers will recognize the name John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry . Nevertheless, every sports fan should be required to know his story. His is a story of fighting, fair-play, and the power of words. John Douglas is credited with what is currently known as The Queensberry Rules . Although originally written by another SportGent named John Graham Chambers in 1865, The Queensberry Rules (which was only publicly endorsed by Douglas) is a code of conduct and accepted rules for the sport of boxing. It is these rules that set the stage for how professional boxing matches are held today. What does The Queensberry Rules have to do with you? When it comes to understanding groups,

#11 I am Focused on the Small Wins: 3 Considerations for Goal-Setting

The following post is the eleventh installment for the 13 Beliefs of Good Coaches . Despite the essential need to set goals, good sport coaches are aware of the paradoxical quality of goal-setting. How many of you have one of those in-car navigation systems? I recently, as the caring and helpful husband I am, bought my wife one for her vehicle. Knowing how busy my wife is, running errands all over town as well as her sub-par sense of direction, I thought I was going to earn Husband of the Year honors with my gift. After hooking up the system, programing it to be as user friendly as possible, I sat back and waited for the praise to start coming my way. Well, two days later my wife informed me that it was either her or the navigation system… one of the two was going to go bye-bye. She hated it and demanded I remove it from her car immediately. Both stunned and a little hurt I decided to drive her car to a meeting I had across town to see for myself why this thing was so horrib

#10 I am Demanding: The Ass-to-Brain Theory

This article marks the tenth installment for the 13 Beliefs of Good Coaches . This post looks at how good sports coaches believe they must be demanding. I argue that it is more important to help your athletes eliminate negative habits than it is to accentuate the positive ones. Not too long ago I had the opportunity to watch the practice of a very successful basketball coach. One thing that struck me was her relentless emphasis on the negative. It seemed that every other time she spoke it was to point out what her players were doing wrong. After the practice I asked why she felt this approach, stressing the negatives, was the right way to get her players to reach their potential. Her response, “It works.” Coach Bobby Knight was a famous (some would say infamous) college basketball coach that seemed to take this same “eliminate the negative” approach to teaching his athletes. I have to admit, I am a big Coach Knight fan and have been since first reading John Feinstein's

#9 I am an Architect of Success… To a Point

This article marks the ninth installment for the 13 Beliefs of Good Coaches . This post investigates the belief that thinking out of the box is important for any coach. Encouraging your players, staff, and yourself to be innovative is vital. BUT, it is also your job to stop all bad ideas and most of the good ones too. Far and away one of my favorite sports movies of all time is Moneyball . Moneyball is the story of how Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, transformed the game of baseball by taking a sophisticated sabermetric approach to scouting and analyzing players. The reason I loved the movie was because it portrayed an aspect of coaching that is often overlooked by the media. Sure, there are a ton of great movies, books, and documentaries about a coach that inspires his team to greatness (my all-time favorite of these is Hoosiers ). There are also wonderful stories about a coach who makes a personal connection with their athletes and helps