Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 06:23PM Psychologists have been studying the art of persuasion for nearly a century, analyzing activities like political propaganda, television campaigns and door-to-door sales. Many factors influence people’s susceptibility to an appeal, studies suggest, including their perception of how exclusive an opportunity is and whether their neighbors are buying it.
Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 01:41PM His coaches and teammates, though, noticed that he could jump even higher. Every time he cleared the pole, he had about a foot to spare. But if they moved the bar up even an inch, the vaulter would hit it every time. One day, when the vaulter was not looking, his teammates raised the bar a good six inches. The man vaulted over it, again with a foot to spare.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007 at 01:50PM Just about any sports movie, airport paperback or motivational tape delivers a few boilerplate rules for success. Believe in yourself. Don’t take no for an answer. Never quit. Don’t accept second best. Above all, be true to yourself. It’s hard to argue with those maxims. They seem self-evident — if not written into the Constitution, then at least part of the cultural water supply that irrigates everything from halftime speeches to corporate lectures to SAT coaching classes.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 12:23AM Coaches perform a variety of functions to maintain the team as a unit and facilitate the completion of the team goals. Descriptions of the tasks coaches are expected to accomplish are broad, but quite unspecific. Often their duties vary greatly from institution to institution. Ordering equipment, arranging schedules and transportation, counseling players, administering the budget and constantly evaluating players are but a few of the aspects of the coach’s job.
Friday, May 18, 2007 at 12:22AM The coaching of team sports is a tradition-bound culture that often has viewed the expression of individual difference as incompatible with optimum team performance or organizational efficiency. This is particularly true in team sports that resonate with military metaphor and unquestioned authority.
Friday, May 18, 2007 at 12:21AM Most people recognize the Gallup name in association with opinion polling and market research. Few people know that the most extensive part of Gallup’s business is in its selection division, which includes the Gallup Leadership Institute. I had the opportunity to work in one of the programs of Gallup University. For me, one of the benefits of that work was coming to think in new ways about leadership – including the leadership role played by soccer coaches.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 12:20AM The laboratory is a hardwood floor. The subjects are women between the ages of 18 and 22. Their area of interest is basketball. During my 20 years at Ohio Wesleyan, players have taught me as much about leadership as they have learned about basketball from the coaching staff.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 12:20AM An essential ingredient of coaching leadership is the ability of the coach to “pull” his/her athletes through the barriers of stress that accompany the intense work required for successful performance. Of course, we know from our physiology of exercise and training that the discomfort associated with the preparation of the athletes for sustained activity is difficult.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 12:19AM Today the sports section of a local newspaper hardly is the place to look for role models, no more than sitcoms that make adults look like weaklings in dealings with their families. In these days of two-career couples and the failure of the traditional family, we as coaches have the responsibility to educate our players on what it takes to become successful leaders and adults.
Friday, May 11, 2007 at 12:03AM Leaders are made, not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile. – Vince Lombardi
Friday, May 4, 2007 at 12:03PM Which is more important to you, making friends or becoming the best player you possibly can? That’s a dilemma many girls face as they attempt to advance to the next level. However, it doesn’t have to be an either/or choice. You can do both. “I remember growing up, I wanted to win, but not at all costs,” says Carla Overbeck. “You had friends on the team and you wanted everyone to like you. It was hard. It’s part mentality and part process. Just knowing that it’s okay if you beat this person because you are trying to make her better. When I got to school, I certainly did want to win, but I didn’t win a one-v-one my entire freshman year. I had to learn, and I learned from the other players around me. When you see someone going after it in practice, it’s contagious. When you see someone busting their hump, you want to do it too.”
Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 10:16PM You really could open an interesting debate with respect to teaching sporting skills to kids. I did last week during a presentation I gave to area basketball coaches. Some trainers and coaches have decided that the skills required to achieve a certain task should be taught from the beginning. Others believe in the concept of motor patterning – allowing the young athlete to find their own style of achieving a task. The debate gets even trickier when you factor in the varying nuances and therefore objectives of different sports. For example, in basketball, if the ball goes in the hoop, it doesn’t really matter how it got there.
Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 02:00AM We have all seen it, heard it, read it. Soccer isn't a "real" sport. Soccer is boring. Soccer is only for geeky gym class kids with pocket-protectors and thick glasses. Soccer is a foreign game for hooligan, drunken psycho-fans. Soccer is just plain un-American. Just before the 1994 World Cup, Mike Barnacle of the Boston Globe described soccer as "a mindless sport where hordes of incomprehensible athletes run aimlessly in a circle until everyone is dehydrated and, finally, some guy uses his skull to score a touchdown." Where did this anti-soccer sentiment come from? It surely didn't materialize out of thin air. On the contrary, many of these argument are recycled year after year. Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post even tried the same joke in a June, 1994 column that he had used before the 1990 World Cup ("Can the Sweeper perform any domestic chores?"). No other sport is privy to such consistent degradation in the mainstream press. Tom Weir wrote in USA Today in December, 1993, that "hating soccer is more American than apple pie, driving a pickup, or spending Saturday afternoons channel surfing with the remote control." What is it about soccer that generates this degradation? In fact, most anti-soccer arguments have little to do with soccer. Whether its Dan Barreiro in the Mpls. Star Tribune inviting foreigners to World Cup in the U.S. with, "Bring us your tired, your poor, your hoodlums!" or Bernie Lincicome from the Chicago Tribune suggesting soccer's only value in the U.S. is to serve "in junior high gym class as phys ed credit for kids who are free to use their hands to push their glasses up their nose," what is often called "soccer bashing" is really based on century-old notions that branded football as the manly, American games, while soccer was either a sport for immigrants or a sport for fitness.
Monday, March 26, 2007 at 11:20AM EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- When it was over, Monica Thompson could have climbed up the ladder to trim down a piece of the East Regional championship net. She had every right to have a few inches of the twine. Her strength, her will and her support meant that much to Georgetown's run to the Final Four. The past two years, John Thompson III hasn't said much about his wife's battle with breast cancer. But don't think for a second that he hasn't been dealing with more stress and pressure than anyone else coaching in this field. Thompson III somehow has balanced coaching the Hoyas to the Big East regular-season and tournament titles and now to the East Regional crown, while also helping with his wife's battle and raising three children under the age of nine. "John has done an incredible job of balancing and keeping everything in perspective," said Monica, with one of her children, giddy with excitement, hanging around her leg while she held another. "I was diagnosed in November [2005] before the first game, and my whole treatment was the entire season and I finished my chemo during the [2006] NCAA Tournament. "He was there, he was at every single chemo treatment," Monica said. "We're able to do it through the support of friends and family and the belief in God."
Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 01:37AM The 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team ran head on into such a wall. But they refused to stop and instead made the decision to go right through it. It was not that they knew they would win; they could not possibly know that. But they faced the realities of life. They knew how good the Russians were. They knew how badly the Russians had already humiliated them just a few weeks earlier. Beat the Russians? Impossible. Or was it? They knew they were young and inexperienced, but they refused to take the easy way out. They skated head-on against the wall, never once halting and deciding there was no way through; never once telling themselves that they could not win. No stress, no pressure; just joy and happiness.
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