Sticky ideas from 2024

To finish off 2024, I wanted to share a couple of other people’s ideas that stuck around my brain for days, weeks, or even months afterward.

Luciano’s ocean analogy beautifully captures the student-athlete reality.

Like most things worth doing, college sports are hard work, with peaks and troughs throughout. You can apply the same logic to coaching in college too!

Because it is such a grind to even get there, it’s easy to forget that being an NCAA student-athlete isn’t always going to feel like a reward. 

Every program’s Instagram makes it look like sunshine and rainbows, but there are more tough days than good ones overall.

It’s just that the good ones might be among some of the best feelings you’ll ever have, and that’s worth chasing.

I wrote a series earlier this year about entitlement (part 1, part 2), one of the biggest culture-killers in any team.

You have to fight against it every day, even in teams with an otherwise strong culture. 

While there is an onus on players to check themselves and police others in this area, coaches must also take inventory of their environment, and ensure they aren’t unwittingly allowing it. 

The elephant in the room, though, is that coaches at all levels will tell you entitlement levels are rising on their teams in the post-COVID era.

And this is coming at a time when many also fear holding players accountable due to repercussions from athletic directors or parents. 

Just as 21st-century society is having a reckoning over cancel culture and a me-first attitude, it will be fascinating to see if or when there is a correction in this area, or whether entitlement will continue to flourish in sports.

One way to guard against entitlement in sports is to ensure everything is earned, and this concept caught my eye earlier in the year. 

The selection of captains is fraught with problems no matter how you slice it. Coaches will be accused of picking favorites if they select, while player-led selections can end up being glorified popularity contests. 

As in the ocean analogy above, everybody wants to be a captain, but not everyone wants to handle the burden of leadership when things inevitably get difficult in a team.

Shapiro’s idea would at least mean you’d know who actually stepped up when the s**t hit the fan, not just who you hope will.

This is another one that is true for both players and coaches. 

On the playing side, I am always surprised by the cognitive dissonance on display when players arrive for preseason out of shape, fail the fitness test, and then come knocking on the head coach’s door for an explanation as to why they don’t get selected.

You can’t control most of what contributes to the selection process, but your fitness is one area you have near full control over. 

On the coaching side, it’s about planning for performance. 

A key question we asked ourselves as a staff at Liberty Field Hockey as part of this year’s fall debrief was: “What issue might we be talking about in-season, that we wished we worked on during the spring?” 

The curriculum for the spring season is every NCAA coach’s full control - so use it wisely. 

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Last but not least, and on a lighter note to finish, this was one of my favorite field hockey memories of 2024.

Drawing 1-1 with Belgium in a game we were lucky to still be in, the USA U16 WNT seemingly lost in the dying seconds to a deflected goal.

But the umpire immediately disallowed it due to a backstick, and USA responded with a composed length-of-the-field counter-attack to win it at the other end. 

This was an extraordinary moment to witness in person and be a small part of as a coach. It was also the ultimate “sport is cruel” moment.

And a reminder that in sport, as in life, larger outcomes can hinge on a couple of key moments. How we perform under pressure in those is what will really define us.