Lessons Learned in Lubbock

Going from a big win to a big loss:

Well, this week we will pull from the other extreme of the Growth Mindset, we had a lot of failure playing in Lubbock against Texas Tech. Generally teams in our division of college football play 1 game a year against a big program such as Texas Tech to have a litmus test on what you need to improve on and how fast your team is. Unfortunately we played a very good opponent in Texas Tech and they used our game to get their true freshman starting QB a lot of work. Couple that with injuries from the Cardinals, it was not a great day. The important thing we must grasp from this is the ability to move forward and see the success we had in certain areas of the game.

Lamar Cardinals in Lubbock:

https://twitter.com/LamarAthletics/status/1038518587026231298

As we roll into Week 2 of class:

This is a timely topic for me this week. Last week, we started our Lamar Football Season playing Kentucky Christian University, a much smaller program. A smaller program will typically choose to play a larger program preseason for several reasons. It allows a challenge, and it usually provides a large payment that helps fund their program for the season. This game provided an opportunity for Kentucky to learn through failure, and gave us an opportunity to try some different things and to play some younger athletes.

This week was our turn. We travelled to Lubbock to play a much larger FBS Big 12 team for the same reasons Kentucky Christian came to us. Our athletes fought hard all game, but we came up short, way short, in front of a national audience on Fox Sports. As a coach, this will give me an opportunity to support my athletes through failure. In our situation, my athletes have been on both sides of this situation in a one week period. They experienced a great win, and a huge loss.

This will give me an opportunity to guide my students through the process of failure - it is okay to fail, if you use the situation to learn from those mistakes, correct them, and work to improve. In my line of work, if you’re not winning, you will soon be looking for another job. We will break down the film, play by play, and work with our athletes on correcting mistakes. We will also, as coaches, look for the areas where we failed, and learn from and improve on those as well. Did we misread the offense? Did we call plays that weren’t suited for our athletes in certain situations?

Our yet is clear, we have not pulled everything together, “yet,” but we will learn from the first win, and from the first loss. We will pull together as a team and support each other as players and coaches as we learn from failure and build upon those lessons.

Now, to the portfolio. As I continue to search new platforms, and get over the fear of learning to use them, I also continue to think about my audience. Should it be my student athletes? Should it be other college coaches? Should it be high school coaches and athletes thinking about supporting their high school students to work toward being a college athlete? Is there a way to incorporate all of these? In our current environment, recruiting is a big business, so gearing toward the high school aspect sounds promising. As someone teaching a system to incoming college athletes from varied programs, gearing toward my current athletes would be beneficial.

I have used Google Sites, and it was fairly easy to use. As Dr. Reed mentioned in the lecture, is does not allow for Blog entries, so I think I will move toward WordPress, but I need to work fast, as I understand the issue of a learning curve. I look forward to hearing what other members of my group, and the rest of the class, are thinking.

As far as the discussion on pecking order vs collaboration, I am fortunate to work with a great, collaborative team. We are all on the same page, working toward the same goal. We all have our specific duties and responsibilities, but we are all always willing to jump in to help as needed. While I have heard the horror stories about organizations that work differently, in my short, professional career, I have had the benefit of collaborative organizations.

One a side note, this was shared with me today, and I wanted to share it with you. Legendary Aggie and Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant carried this poem in his wallet until the day he dies - the author is unknown. I will share this with my athletes.

“This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use as I will. I can waste it or use it for good. What I do today is very important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving something in its place I have traded for it. I want it to be gain, not loss — good, not evil. Success, not failure in order that I shall not forget the price I paid for it.”