What is Your Culture?

The Clinton Junior High Girls' Basketball team has been in swing for two weeks and the kids are learning about the culture of being a Lady Maroon. I bring up this word "culture", because someone asked me recently...what is culture and how do you build it? Culture building is implementing a new way of life for a business, team, or organization. It's setting internal standards for the way things are going to be done. It's holding the entire organization accountable to those standards despite pressure from external sources. Whether the expectations are visual or not; everyone involved can feel them upon arrival in a team meeting, practice, or competition, etc. To put it simply; it's all about having passion and a purpose for what we are doing.

Every drill we implement with our players builds layer upon layer of the necessary fundamentals aligning to  our basketball philosophy. We are teaching our young ladies that success is achieved by relentless effort, repetition of actions, attention to details, and unparalleled enthusiasm for simple execution. We praise our players continuously for everything they do right, and in return, they listen to our suggestions for things that need improvement. We know that if we can improve our parts; the end result will be a more successful whole. Nothing is more important to our coaching staff than getting our kids to develop to their maximum potential, as a player, and as a person.

This season will mark 12 years of coaching basketball in my life. I've coached in four different school districts, thus developed four different cultures. I've seen over a thousand practices, games, clinics, etc. The thing I hear over and over from coaches about players are..."they can't do this, they can't do that, is anything actually being taught to these kids at the lower levels?"  Frankly, I get sick and tired of hearing these comments. For every second you spend complaining about your kids, you could be spending that time helping them develop those fundamentals that you expect of them. Good habits take time to develop.  Good habits must be repeated to maintain. If you allow a player to revert back to an old habit for a single day; you have just unraveled two years of hard work. Congratulations. Now you can go back to complaining about all the things they can't do. You now have an internal excuse to make you feel better the next time your kids lose a game.

Culture. It's what you create. It can be a negative environment, or a positive one. I prefer the latter...

Yours in Hoops,
Josh Williams