Intilling winning attitude

I'm a firm believer in a winning attitude really starting when you win your first "big" game that you are not supposed to win. A few years back, I was on a staff of a very young team where we won only one game the entire season--and it ended up it was against a team that was probably the worst in the state. We got blown out of nearly every other game--including a 72-0 ass-kicking (excuse my "French" but there is no other way to put it). We were bad. The next season we lost our first game, to a team we should have beaten. We won our second vs a team that was not as deep as we were. Our third game was against one of our big rivals who was ranked 2nd or 3rd in state-I forget which. Our kids prepared like crazy vs this team. We really wanted this game...we had a good week of practice, and we started to see our senior leadership emerge--what we were severely lacking the season before. It was a spectacular game, and we pulled it out in the 4th quarter. That game set our entire season up. That game really formed our team's attitude. Had we lost that game, I don't know how our season would have ended up.

Find a game that you can "target". Something that your team can really be inspired by. If you can show up, play very well, and maybe even pull it out...I was amazed to see the team gel together and believe.

Each team, each year is different. I am realizing that the most difficlut piece of coaching is being able to feel the pulse of your team. Find your leaders (not necessarily your best players) and lead them-the team will follow. Get rid of players with attitudes that will pull your team in the wrong directions. Coach them to be fundamentally sound. Everything else will fall in after that.