Week Three & Professional Growth

There’s not a whole lot to say about last week’s game – we traveled and played a team that was overmatched. As with many of our opponents, they have some athletes, but they just haven’t been able to develop an offensive and defensive line. They played with heart and class and I admire them, and wish them luck in the rest of their season.

This week is a rematch from Week 2 against our friends on the West Coast Lightning. We’ll need to continue to try and perfect what we do and take every opportunity to get better.

Now to the professional growth part: I am a little giddy so let me explain. There is an annual offensive line coaches’ clinic held in Cincinnati that I have long wanted to attend, called the C.O.O.L. Clinic (www.thecoolclinic.com). It is a weekend of nothing but offensive line coaches and topics, and it is absolutely on the cutting edge of offensive line thought. I’ve always wanted to go, but unfortunately, the clinic is normally held in May, which is of course, right in the middle of the women’s season. Anyway, I was browsing through another one of my favorite websites, X’s and O’s Labs (www.xandolabs.com) and saw the link to the COOL Clinic. I thought I’d torture myself a little by seeing what I was missing out on this year, so wandered over…..

They have an offer there of every DVD of every clinic they’ve done since 1996…..126 of them total! They have 26 DVD’s of just drills. Every possible OL topic you can imagine, including long snapping. Was it expensive? Yeah, in a pure dollar amount…but not for the amount of information there is. So yes, I bought them. I’m always preaching about bettering yourself as a coach and getting better – how could I not? Besides, my players deserve my very best and I’m always worried about getting stale.

I mentioned X’s and O’s Labs a little earlier. Their membership of $35 a year is one of the very best values out there. I subscribed for one year to another site, which was devoted to the spread offense and spent $100, only to find out that it stopped getting updated after about three months. Fortunately, I got “probably” enough information to justify the expense. But X’s and O’s Labs gets updates every week, and it is quality stuff. Just two weeks ago I picked up an OL drill from that site that has proved to be popular with my OL, and I got a lot of ST stuff from there as well. I cannot recommend them enough.

We always tell our players (“we” meaning coaches in general) something along the lines of, “If you want to be a champion, you have to sacrifice” or something catchy like “If you want what others don’t have, you have to be willing to do what they won’t”, etc….well guess what Coach? That applies to you as well. What are you willing to do that others won’t to get better?

What drives you? For me, there was an epiphany of sorts just last weekend. After our game, a couple of our coaches were talking at dinner about Coach Geno Auriemma’s (UConn women's b-ball) book (I haven’t read it, but plan to now) and how he was driven by self-doubt. I have to say in total candidness, that that can easily describe myself as well. I do always wonder if I’m good enough to stand up against the best coaches across the country. I compare myself constantly to guys like John Konecki, the staff of the Boston Militia and our own DC, Mike Suggett. When I talk to other coaches about different situations I always ask myself “would I have seen what they saw? Would I have had an answer to that?” It may be a curse of sorts, because intellectually I know I’m at least half-way decent – I think the results over the years show that to be the case. But I always want more, to know that I’m the best I can be. That’s probably why I just bought 126 DVD’s.

You can start small – just by coming to practice with a plan and a way to execute it. I still see many of my colleagues (not necessarily on the Surge) come to practice without a practice plan and making things up as they go. Asking the coordinator 5 minutes before practice, “What are we doing today” is not the road to a championship. Then, find out what in the offseason you can do to get better and make your team better. It might take some money and it might take some time. But remember (to use another cliché) “once you’ve won a championship, you’re a champion forever”…so how much is a “forever” memory worth? If you look at the pictures following either of our national championships, I think you’ll see that they are priceless.