Last night after dinner, Coach Clendenen gave a great talk on one-half of our theme for the week, "competitivenss". She's had the privilege of experiencing high-level sports as both an athlete (she was on scholarship at Cal Poly SanLuis Obispo for swimming), was raised in an athletic home (her dad was the UCR basketball coach for 30 years) and is now married to a caddy on the PGA tour. Her experiences are vast, and she's witnessed some of the best sports has to offer.
What was great about her talk though was really the talking the athletes did. A great group discussion unfolded as groups of guys and gals broke up to talk about the strengths and weaknesses we have in the competitive arena. It was awesome seeing the likes of Charlie, Ethan, Patrick, Larissa, and Carissa leading the discussion, coaxing from their teammates pearls of insight and wisdom and peeling back in moments of candid honesty the veil of weakness. Powerful stuff!
Tieing it all together was Coach John Wooden's famous and well-used "Pyramid of Success." The top of that pyramid is "Competitive Greatness", something hopefully all athletes and teams aspire to. Below it are the building blocks that get athletes to the pinnacle, or as the case might be, the "stumbling blocks" that keep teams and athletes from ever achieving their greatest potential. Wooden's Pyramid is a powerful tool for helping any success-minded group get to their goals. We're promising ourselves to really work toward that this season. As was mentioned in the talk, as coaches, we feel the foundational level of the pyramid has been firmly and successfully laid in place already, good news as we continue to climb upward.
What was great about her talk though was really the talking the athletes did. A great group discussion unfolded as groups of guys and gals broke up to talk about the strengths and weaknesses we have in the competitive arena. It was awesome seeing the likes of Charlie, Ethan, Patrick, Larissa, and Carissa leading the discussion, coaxing from their teammates pearls of insight and wisdom and peeling back in moments of candid honesty the veil of weakness. Powerful stuff!
Tieing it all together was Coach John Wooden's famous and well-used "Pyramid of Success." The top of that pyramid is "Competitive Greatness", something hopefully all athletes and teams aspire to. Below it are the building blocks that get athletes to the pinnacle, or as the case might be, the "stumbling blocks" that keep teams and athletes from ever achieving their greatest potential. Wooden's Pyramid is a powerful tool for helping any success-minded group get to their goals. We're promising ourselves to really work toward that this season. As was mentioned in the talk, as coaches, we feel the foundational level of the pyramid has been firmly and successfully laid in place already, good news as we continue to climb upward.
We'll continue to build on that groundwork of "Industriousness, Friendship, Loyalty, Cooperation, and enthusiasm" - all of which we're witnessing in spades this week - to hopefully bring our teams to the peak of competitive greatness by November. That's our goal, onward we climb!
Interesting that you should write about Wooden's Pyramid, Brad. I was talking to David today and asked him where his blog title, "Breakfast with Coach", came from. He explained that it was something he found in one of John Wooden's books, many of which Dave owns and has had signed by the great "Wizard of Westwood" himself.
ReplyDeleteYou can't go wrong if you and the rest of the coaching staff are using John Wooden's playbook. Well done!
yeah! Ms. Masi/Clendennon is awesome!!!
ReplyDelete-bridgetspeedygonzalez