Tried and true practice ideas/philosophy?

Leadership Academy



It is safe to say that even the most talented teams go nowhere without great leadership. Sure, coaches are expected to lead the players to the “promised land” but in reality, it takes players to be leaders to truly be successful.



The pros of a leadership academy is developing better leaders on the team. They understand what the staff expects out of them and understand the different strategies to lead their peers. It also shows some kids who do not see themselves as leaders that it is not impossible to lead others. It can be a great confidence builder too. It also will help develop our boys into young men and hopefully become leaders outside of football like in the classroom and in their communities.



The cons of a leadership academy is simply that it is time consuming. At my small school, players typically are 2/3 sport athletes and are involved in other extracurriculars. We already expect them to lift/workout 3 days a week, and if we add a leadership academy, it’s another commitment they must make to football during the offseason. They can start to get burnt out on football.



We would implement this program by using our day off lifting (Wednesday) after school to talk about different leadership ideas. We’d use the same 3:30-5:00 time slot that we have for our workouts. Some of them would be communication, little brother program, energy bus, passion, guest speakers, going to watch a college practice, and community service. If it is a lesson-type of day, we’d use the classroom attached to our weight room. There are 22 Wednesdays in 2019 from January to May. We’d try to take the last Wednesday of each month and make that a 1-1 ½ of community service (our players have to get 5+ in the offseason anyway to get their helmet stripe).