Coaching Right Attitude

We all love our kids and, let’s face it; we also love playing sports with our kids. For me, it’s way that I spend most of my free time and it is right up there as one of my favorite things to do. That being said, I also need to realize that statistically, none of kids that I coach will ever play professional sports, nearly all of them will not play sports in college, and many of them will not even play varsity sports in high school. So, what does this mean for us as a coach? We need to emphasize all other aspects of sports and life lessons that make us love playing game. Mostly, we need to make experience fun!

In 1988, Robert Fulghum wrote book “All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten”. I’ve often told people that you can learn everything you need to know by playing sports – especially youth sports. Many of same lessons apply, but on an even bigger scale where kids learn success and failure, wining and losing, sportsmanship and teamwork, and how to respond in many pressure situations. None of these are easy lessons. Winning with grace is just as hard to teach as losing with dignity. How can you do this and make sure that everybody has a great season? That’s trick.

Every team you ever coach, especially teams with younger kids, will be split between kids that are talented and kids that are not. The goal that you have as a coach is to make sure that every one of those kids has a great experience and wants to play again next year. I take most pride in job I did as a coach when worst kid on team loves sport and keeps playing year after year. The way that I do this is to emphasize things other than on field performance – I try to stress effort, trying your best and hustle.

There are several practical things that you can do to emphasize these “other” characteristics. In basketball, for example, instead of emphasizing and keeping stats for scoring, keep stats on hustle, picks set, good defense, rebounds, filling a lane, or just being in right position. After every game, point out something positive that every kid did during game. Award a point for each time a kid does something you emphasize and give stars or sew on patches when points are accumulated. You’ll see that these kids will do anything to get a star on their uniform, even pay attention in practice!

Coaching Right Fundamentals

The movie “The Color of Money”, when Paul Newman gave Tom Cruise valuable cues (Its collection of George Balabshka), it arouses interest and concepts of billions of amateurs to start collecting cues, and it started ask who is George Balabushka?

Actually in early 1959, Geo Balabushka has benn making cues. The cues he made are as exquisite as famous pianos made by russian Strndivari. At that time, lots of fancy players (those days, a lot of profeesional players has emerged in America) has regarded his cues as a prized collection.

George Balabushka was born in Russia 1912, pass away in 1975 at age of 63. He came to America at a young age of 12 and settled down in New York. His first job was in Manhattan, making wooden toys in school for teaching purposes. Thus giving him opportunity to acquire basic foundation and knowledge of characteristics of wood. Later in his life, he opened a company manufacturing wooden products, and because of this, his middle finger was cut off by an electrical saw. Not satisfied at sight of losing a finger, George made himself a wooden finger, his craftmanship is so good that even his friends did not realized that he lost his finger.

George loves playing billiards when he was young, he used to take part in competitions, and because of his exposure, he came to know renowned contestants and billiard celebraties.

Besides taking care of his business, George also helps his friends to repair cues. At same time, Frank Paradise used his own name to brand himself, and George sees it as an opportunity. By end of 1959, George made some cues himself and gave it to his friends as christmas gift, he was also collecting data and feedback on performance of his cues. Not long, George Balabushka started accepting orders with his thirty years experience in wood working business.