February 22, 2021 | Tagged Coaching
Courage to Turn a Tough Basketball Season Into Future Successs
NBC Basketball Camps Better Season
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston Churchill
Basketball season is coming to a close for many high school teams. Courage is required to meet a disappointing season with resolve to make the big changes necessary for success in the future. Courage is required during tournament time when victory or defeat hangs in the balance. Courage is defined as “the ability to stand up for what is right in difficult situations.” Courage comes from the Latin root cor which means heart. Heart remains to this day a metaphor for inner strength.
In the book, Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin he writes, “In all practice activities it’s highly valuable to get others’ views about what you should be working on and how you’re doing.”
Here are the two crucial keys to turning a disappointing season into future success.
- Know what you should be working on.
- Know how effectively you are practicing.
The first key requires a plan, a training curriculum that will help you improve the areas you need to improve. Courage requires the work to keep finding the right plan for your success. You need a practice plan that is the best use of your time, builds on your strengths, and eliminates your weaknesses. For teams, this is a careful evaluation of your talent with a specific plan to improve between now and next season. For individual players, it is the same, have a plan, work your plan and become better.
The second key is the ability to assess how well you are practicing. This is the hardest key of the two. It is harder than the plan because it is easy to deceive ourselves. Also getting outside evaluation is daunting. When others evaluate us there is such a fine line between too much praise which can create over- confidence and ego countered with too much criticism which can create hopelessness and despair. Have the courage to do the work to find the right mentor who can accurately evaluate your practice skills as well as say what you need to change in a way which will motivate you to be better.
Coaches should work to get outside feedback from skilled mentors and teammates should get individual assessment. Together this collective courage to work on weaknesses will put you in position for success next year.
NBC Basketball Camps is one of the largest, most respected basketball camp training programs in the world located in 16 states and six countries. For more information about NBC Basketball visit www.nbccamps.com/basketball.