The Third Longevity Secret: Facing Your Fears.

We have a closeout drill in practice that gives the offensive player a choice once they receive the ball. The drill starts with the defensive player making an underhand pass to the offensive player. The defensive player sprints to the offensive player to closeout, which for non-basketball folks is done in an effort to reduce the space the offensive player has to operate. The defensive player runs with their arm or arms up to take away the shot. The closer they get to the offensive player the sprint turns into the chopping of their feet. The chopping of the feet is done to be able to control the offensive player's dribble attack. The offensive player is only allowed one dribble, since it is a drill, and the defensive player has to slide their feet to control the ball-handler. Once the dribble is picked up the opportunity is there to make a choice by the ball-handler. The defensive player is instructed to get in the ball-handler's face and yell "Ball, Ball, Ball, Ball".

What does the offensive player do?

They can either turn their back to the defender and yell "Help", thus not seeing where to pass the ball to a teammate (if it was a game situation) or they can face the defense, sweep the ball through to create space and possibly open up some room to not only pass, but to shoot.

What's the better choice? The answer is to face the defense. I make it a point during this drill at the start of each season to use the drill as a life lesson: When you have an issue or a fear, do you run away from it or do you face it? You can choose to run away from the problem, but the problem will sense that and when a similar situation occurs the problem will double in intensity. If you choose to face the situation and handle it properly, the chances of the problem becoming larger later on tends to decrease.

I, as every other coach at any level, have had to face my own fears. Fear of failure, fear of criticism, fear of not being respected or fear of not meeting expectations. How did I handle all that then? How do I handle all of that now? What advice do I have for new or younger coaches who have that fear?

It begins and ends with the simple question: "Do you love what you do?" If the answer without hesitation is "Yes" then you have nothing to fear... I'll explain later. Next you then have to clearly understand that you are NOT going to make everyone happy. Once you have inner peace on that understanding, you then need to know that sometimes it is best, to quote Robert Frost, "Take the road less traveled as it can make all the difference in the world".

LOVING WHAT YOU DO REMOVES THE FEAR OF FAILURE.

Coaching is not a seasonal activity for me where I only coach between November - February; those who know me know that I coach 365 days a year. Consistently coaching allows me to figure out what works and what doesn't, how to handle different personalities and different situations and to compartmentalize, or I should say, prioritize what is really important versus what isn't. The more I coach the more confident I am when we get to those "tough" or "big" games in the regular or post-season. That confidence removes that fear of failing. It doesn't mean you will always win those games, but you know at the very least that you have done everything you can to remove the fear of failing so you can coach without it on your mind.

I know some of you are saying "I can't coach 365 days a year" and I understand that totally. However, to reduce or even remove the stress of failing, you have to spend some time away from the season perfecting your craft. Go to camps or clinics, watch coaching videos online or, when watching a game on TV, don't watch as a fan, but instead watch as a coach. Ask yourself how Player A got open or how Player B defended a particular play and then see how you would apply that situation to your team.

Too many times I hear coaches telling their players at the end of a season "You need to be better when you come back to start playing next year", only to see that same coach not setting the example by not attending a camp or clinic to get themselves better. You cannot ask players to get better if they don't see you trying to get better as well.

WHERE'S YOUR HEART... WHERE'S YOUR MIND.

There is no other "job" I would rather have than coaching. Working with young people is such a privilege. That should not be lost on anyone who coaches. Coaches have a daily opportunity to help young people, and sometimes their friends and family members by helping them work through their struggles, instructing them on how to handle success, offering advice on handling issues within their team and illustrating ways to continue to improve no matter how good they already are. If you look at things through that context you won't fail because you are already succeeding... in life.

Yes all of this takes time, and yes time is valuable, but if you truly love what you do, you'll find the time. The time spent reduces and sometimes removes your fear of failure. If you would rather be doing something else or your mind is on something other than helping your team and program become the best it can be you have to have an honest talk with yourself.

YOU ARE NOT GOING TO MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY.

This has to be one of the biggest mistakes I see coaches make; I have briefly touched on this topic already in another post. If you are trying to coach in a game and your goal is to make sure everyone is happy, you are setting yourself up for failure.

You need to decide "How am I going to coach?" Am I going to coach to win, am I going to coach to give everyone equal playing time, or am I going to coach out of fear of being criticized?

My philosophy is to coach to win. I make sure that I don't try to win at all costs by breaking rules, cursing or swearing at kids or even getting personal with them in the heat of the moment and I don't want to set a poor example through my actions on the sidelines towards referees, opponents or the crowd. By coaching to win you are setting the expectation level on your team. Some players are skilled and talented enough to help your team be in position to win those "tough" and "big" games and others aren't. Again, I have touched on that in a previous post. You can't let the ones who aren't able to help your team win those important games control how you coach. Understand that if you play them because you worried about them or their parents criticizing you, they are going to still criticize you because you either didn't help them score enough points or you lost a game you shouldn't have when playing them a lot is the reason you lost.

If you are worried that they'll begin to sulk, that they are going to cause chemistry issues or that you'll have to face their parents after a game or the next day in the school office then you already have lost. Your mind will be elsewhere (distraction... go back and read the "Focus" post) instead of on the task at hand which is trying to help your team succeed. You have to change where your thought focus choice is: On the team or on the ones who are going to be pouting.

You don't want to have a cold heart but if the ones you don't play in those important games quit, what have you lost? Sometimes your team needs that to happen in order to move forward. Just know the right ones in that same situation won't quit and will make your team stronger (the theory of being as strong as your weakest member). The ones that "get it" will respect you and what you are trying to help them all accomplish. However, flip the script... say you try to please everyone by giving out equal playing time in an important game and you lose, what do your better players now think? Do they say "He really doesn't want to win so I need to go somewhere where they do?" If they leave you, who are you left with?

There has to be someone reading this right now asking "What does Coach Robinson know about this? "He has won state championships so everyone has to be happy in this program." The answer 100% "WRONG".

As unfortunate as it is... relatively speaking, I don't think that I have coached in a state championship game where, in the aftermath of that game, everyone has been happy. There always have been one or two players, or their parents, who felt like their child didn't get enough playing time in the championship game (I can think of five instances off the top of my head), there are times when someone felt like they should have been MVP of the title game and someone else received it, and there are situations where someone wasn't asked to go to the media room afterwards to talk and gotten upset about not getting to go. Yes, those are, again, relatively speaking, good problems to have because you just won a state championship, but the point to be taken is that the folks who are mad after a state championship game wouldn't have had that opportunity to be mad if I had taken the approach of trying to make everyone happy leading up to that game because we would have been eliminated.

TAKE THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED.

I will touch on this in later posts, but I wanted to give a couple of examples now of "Taking the road less traveled". I mentioned in a previous post about driving from Boone to Winston-Salem and back while I was a senior in college. That was tough and looked at as an inconvenience, but I quickly realized no one else was "taking that road". I had a class in college with several classmates that went on to coach in high school. A few of those classmates I wound up coaching with or against later on in my career. I felt like making the effort to give up some "me" time in college to begin my coaching career would get me ahead of those in my class. That choice was met with A LOT of criticism from those who knew what I was doing.

After my fourth year at R.J. Reynolds HS as a boys assistant coach, I made the decision to leave this budding 4A powerhouse program to go coach at a 1A school in the country, Starmount HS. My feeling was that if I wanted to come back to Reynolds or any school in Forsyth County and be a head coach, I had to look at the long term possibilities of learning to be a head varsity girl coach versus the short team rewards of maybe being a part of a championship team. My first year at Starmount we won seven games while Reynolds, over the next four years, went on to win three straight state championships. All of my "friends" back in Winston and many at Starmount called my decision to leave Reynolds a terrible one and a career-destroyer.

Shortly after my fourth year at Starmount, I decided to not only leave the public school realm, but also the boys side of coaching. I had heard for years that those who go into coaching girls basketball are headed to a dead end for their coaching careers. I heard "No one cares about girls basketball" and "If you do follow through and decide to coach girls basketball, it will ruin any shot of future success".

I, again, didn't listen to the critics and nay-sayers, but instead followed my heart and trusted my instincts and took the head girls basketball job at Bishop McGuinness Catholic HS in Kernersville. Starmount was on the cusp of becoming a strong boys program, while at my first summer practice in June of 2002 at McGuinness two... TWO players showed up. No one wanted that job at McGuinness and I actually turned it down three times before accepting it, but when I did, I had a vision of what we could become if I disciplined my focus. That vision had to include me taking the love I had for coaching basketball that allowed me to drive from Boone to Winston-Salem, it had to include the piece of me not trying to make folks happy by staying put at Reynolds or at Starmount and I had to spend time, lots of time, creating the environment I wanted at McGuinness in order to sustain longevity.

All of these decisions: Boone to Winston, leaving Reynolds, leaving Starmount, coaching girls in high school... all came with its share of fear. But the fear came from letting outsiders get a hold of my thoughts and feelings through their opinions. I was fortunate not to let those opinions control me.

Instead of turning my back to what was in front of me and doing what was easy, I faced my fears, created a space that now has become attractive and have pushed away many of the daily worries that could have plagued me had I done the convenient thing.

Yours for Better Basketball Always,

Brian / Coach Robinson

Next Topic Scheduled For Tuesday, October 10, 2023: Vanilla Ice Cream.