Before coming to Stevenson University, I worked at a small college in Franklin, MA called Dean College. Among my responsibilities at Dean, I served as the women’s basketball coach. For two years, I was the assistant coach and then for two more years, I was the head coach. When I made the transition from assistant coach to head coach, I made an effort to try and learn from other successful head coaches. One way I did this was by attending a three-day coaches clinic in which many of the best college basketball coaches in the country shared some of their secrets to success. If you’re a college basketball fan, you will recognize some of the coaches who presented at the clinic: Coach K (Duke), Coach Pearl (Tennessee), Coach Self (Kansas), Coach Williams (Maryland), and Coach Martelli (St. Joe’s).
One of the lessons that I learned from this experience, and it’s a lesson that has stuck with me to this day, is something that each of the coaches focused on in their presentation. They each said the following: You Achieve What You Emphasize. If you want to be a great defensive basketball team, then you have to emphasize defense every day in practice. It’s not good enough to just say it – you have to emphasize it everyday in practice and run drills each day that helps your players improve in this area.
After hearing each of the coaches discuss this concept, I was reminded of an experience that occurred when I was an assistant coach. Our team was 19-0 and ranked #4 in the country when we traveled to play a conference opponent that we had beaten by 25 points earlier in the season. Long story short, a team we should have beaten fairly easily, defeated us by 5 points. On the bus ride home, the head coach and I were talking about what happened, and I found myself saying the following: “I can’t believe how poorly our players are playing defense and rebounding the basketball…what is wrong with them”! The head coach, to his credit, said the following: “Jeff, it’s our fault as coaches that the team is not playing better defense and rebounding better because we have not been emphasizing this in practice everyday”. For the remainder of the season, we made a point to emphasize these concepts at every practice and we ended up winning our conference championship for the first time in school history and we finished the season ranked 8th in the country.
This may seem like a simple concept, but it’s one that I think is very important when it comes to achieving academic success. Sometimes I talk to students who I know want to achieve academic success. However, when I ask what they are doing on a daily basis to achieve the success they desire, the answer is sometimes not what it needs to be. For example, I was talking to a student recently who told me that math is challenging for him, yet he very much wants to get a good grade in his Algebra course. I have no doubt that he is sincere in his desire to get a good grade. However, until recently, he was not placing enough emphasis on math. He was only focusing on math two days a week. For someone who struggles in math, this was simply not enough. I explained to him that if he truly wanted to achieve success in math, he needed to emphasize it everyday. I encouraged him to practice math problems everyday. I encouraged him to seek tutoring assistance from our Academic Link twice a week, and I encouraged him to seek assistance from his instructor during office hours. Since then, this student has seen improvement in his grades. His success has little to do with what I did, but instead it has everything to do with what he is now doing. He has decided to place an emphasis on math and, as a result, he is beginning to achieve success. I would encourage all students to keep this concept in mind as you prepare for your final weeks of the semester.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of assistance.
Take care…
Jeff
