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Playing Favorites
By John Leonard
One day a
few years ago, a club board member accused me of "having favorites" on
our club team. Several other parent board members nodded their heads in
agreement The implication was that this was a terrible sin. When I was a younger
coach, I thought it was terrible also. And he was right. I did have favorites.
My favorites were those athletes who most fervently did what I asked of them.
Those that did, I gave more attention to. I talked to them more. I spent more
time teaching them. I also expected more of them.
The implication
that he was making was that my favorites got better than the others because they
were my favorites, and that was somehow unfair. He mistook cause for effect.
The fact is, that
the athletes who came to me ready to learn, ready to listen, ready to act on
what they learned and try it my way, even if it was more challenging, more
difficult than they imagined, were ready to get more out of our program. And
they were my favorites.
As a coach, I
have only one thing to offer to an athlete. That is, my attention. Which means
that I attend to their needs. The reward for good behavior should be attention .
. . attending to their needs. The consequence of inattention, lack of effort,
unwillingness or unreadyness to learn or just plain offensive or disruptive
behavior is my inattention to that athlete.
How could
it be other than this? If you have three children, and you spend all of your
time and energy work working with the one that is badly behaved, what does that
tell your other two children? It tells them that to capture your attention, they
should behave badly. What we reward, is what we get.
As a coach,
I want athletes who are eager to learn, eager to experiment to improve, eager to
work hard. I want athletes who come to me to help develop their skills both
mental and physical, and are willing to accept what I have to offer. Otherwise,
why have they come to me? And I am going to reward that athlete with my
attention. In so doing, I encourage others to become like the athlete above. If
I spent my time with the unwilling, the slothful, the disruptive, I would only
be encouraging that behavior.
The link I
want to forge is between attention and excellence. Excellence in the sense of
achieving all that is possible, and desired. My way of forging that, is to
provide my attention to those who "attend" to me. This does of course
result in increased performance for those that do so. I am a professional coach,
and when I pay attention to a person, that person is going to improve. Over
time, this makes it appear that my "favorites" are the better
swimmers. Not so at all. The better swimmers are those that pay attention, and
thus become my favorites.
What Dad
didn’t realize is that you must have favorites if anyone is to develop in a
positive fashion. The coach’s job is to reward those who exhibit positive
developmental behaviors. Those are my "favorites," and they should be.
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