4 Pillars of Successful Athletic Programs

January 01, 2023

Today, I’m going to share with you four common components all successful athletic programs have. The benefits of these ideas are they lead to success on and off the field, getting the most out of the talent you do have, and building a program the community can be proud of.

It’s sad that more coaches don’t do these steps. Some don’t know how, some don’t want to, and some believe it is a waste of time.

This journey of athletic growth spanned over a 30 year career of active research, being a part of multiple successful teams as an assistant, leading my own successful programs, sitting in years of clinics, and lots of reading.

There are lots of ways to build a program but these are the most basic topics for you to think about, implement what you want, and think about the rest. No matter what you decide to do… coaches have only three “musts” to make it work.

  1. Must take time to Build it

  2. Must take time to Teach it

  3. Must Enforce it each and every day

Let’s get started.

Here are the most common components all successful athletic programs have.

  1. Mission and Vision

  2. Expectations

  3. Consequences

  4. Leadership Development

Mission and Vision

This is the first step in any successful organization from a Fortune 500 Company to the local high school sports program. All have a mission and a vision statement. These statements give the people on your team a reason to belong, a justification for the workload, and what the end result will look like.

What is the difference between a mission statement and a vision statement?

A mission statement defines the team’s purpose for existence, its objectives, and what the group is currently doing to reach the goals. A vision statement details where the team aspires to go and how it will get there.

Now that the people you coach know what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and what the results will be; it is time to set the expectations, pillars, or habits that will guide the process. As the coach of a team or position, it is up to you to set realistic expectations that will help guide the players and hold them accountable.

Exepectations (Pillars)

As the coach or leader, you must have a strong belief in the mission and vision and how you can help the players and coaches reach these expectations. You must have pillars or habits that fit your team.

If you just copy what others do - that’s not it. You have to sit with the players and staff and make them specific to you - that is the only way it will work. Make them fit you and the current state of your program. You will address these at the beginning of off-season every year.

As a leader you must have an expectation on how the players will act on a daily basis.

  • What is expected in the classroom?

  • What is expected in athletics?

  • What is expected in the community?

As a head football coach, I took the team’s habits to the next level by following Coach Randy Jackson's advice from his book Culture Defeats Strategy:7 Lessons on Leadership from a Texas High School Football Coach. 

Using what he has in his book, I created a “unity council’‘ (I’ll write about this later) to help set our weekly practice pillar.

Here is what the Unity Council and I came up with. The council took each day of the week and gave it one word. This one word was used by coaches and players as often as possible during practice. This one word was our “word for the day.”

  • Monday - Energy

  • Tuesday - Toughness

  • Wednesday - Academic

  • Thursday - Family

  • Friday - Brotherhood

Here is what they meant to the team.

Monday - after a weekend and a day at school we believe the team needed to bring the energy for the first day of practice as we prepare for the week. The players and coaches would stress energy in everything they did that day.

Tuesday - this was our most physical day of the week. Physical toughness was stressed all day. After stretching and warm-up we went straight to the ten yard line and the offense had 4 downs to score. It was first team vs first team, live game, lets get after it, and coaches and subs were encouraging with energy and the players on the field showed their toughness. Coaches got after it too! After 4 plays, it’s over. Break as a team and go follow the practice script.

Wednesday - Academics were a priority. The program I took over had a very high failure rate and half the players were gone after the first grading period. So we started Academic Wednesday. It was an idea I got from DeSoto HS here in Texas. After school on Wednesday, ALL players went straight to tutorials. The entire campus had tutoring that day including my coaches. The coordinators and PE coaches would walk the halls making sure players were in class and not elsewhere. After 45 minutes the players would hustle down and we would start practice 1 hour later than normal but it was worth it. 97% of the team passed all classes. Note: after 3 weeks, if a player had all classes with an 85 or higher they were excused from tutoring. A reward for those who got their work done in class.

Thursday - family day because we ate as a team in the cafeteria. Pre-game meal.

Friday - Brotherhood for game day. We had to stick together as one brotherhood if we were going to be successful.

Consequences

The number one thing we had to do taking over a program was to have reasonable consequences for all expectations not met. We wanted the consequences where the player learned from their mistakes, had a chance to correct it, and document!

Believe it or not, when you as a coach document what happened and read it to the player, the player starts to realize what a mess they are. We were simply working to change habits.

Here are some ideas for you to consider. These worked great for me (I will add more to this in a later post)

  • Attendance Policy

  • Be a Better Bobcat Violation Card

  • Deficiency Log

Attendance was a huge issue. Players missed and still expected to play. We used this Attendance Policy to teach accountability and responsibility.

Be a Better Bobcat Violation Card was a daily ticket if you will. The coach would write up their players and make them aware. The next practice, the player would pay for the violation. Deficiency Log was our documentation for each player. Each player had a file that we noted everything from academic progress, stats, and issues. Once a week, a coach would meet with his high maintenance players. These players needed to be redirected because they had too many referrals or violations. Simply put, the player was not meeting our mission and vision plus he was violating our pillars.

I will have to write the process of how we did this in another post. The system is what makes it work.

Leadership Development

Every coach wants leaders. But how many coaches actually spend time teaching leadership?

All the schools I worked at had block scheduling. We had a 90 minute athletic class in which 30 were used for tutorials and leadership development.

Ideas to use:

  • Give each coach a topic and have them teach it to the team.

  • Give Unity Council members a topic and have them teach it to the team.

  • Have a talk theme for a week and allow volunteers to state what it means to them.

  • Show powerpoint presentations.

  • Share YouTube motivational videos.

  • Assign a book to read to your high end leaders and meet with them weekly before school.

Do what you believe is best for your team.

Here is an editable powerpoint presentation I gave about players blaming, complaining, and defending their poor actions. I found this idea plus many more by following Brian T Kight who has a Daily Discipline email. Kight’s daily email is filled with golden nuggets for you as a person, leader, and coach.

The entire presentation is 49 slides all based on the teachings of Brian T Kight who was an active member to help Urban Meyer develop his program. All these lessons are explained in detail inside the book Above the Line: Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Program. The presentation I created talks about combining these two resources into an excellent teaching resource including:

  • Cultural Blueprint

  • Coach Above the Line History

  • Life Above the Line

  • BCDs

  • R Factor

  • E+R=O

  • Pareto’s Law of 80/20

I shared the BCDs on my Twitter account and as promised here they are. These are 11 slides out of the entire presentation.

Summary

Here’s a recap of resources presented today.

4 Pillars of a Program

  1. Mission and Vision

  2. Expectations

  3. Consequences

  4. Leadership Development

Books to read:

Sports Influencer:

Brian Kight who is a Leadership, Culture, and Discipline Influencer that writes Daily Discipline emails.

Powerpoint Presentation:

I really hope you got a lot of useful information in the inaugural issue of Sunday Morning Coach. I have lots to share and pray you stay with me as I share what I have accumulated over three decades coaching high school sports.

Best to you.Remember, no matter what you decide to do with your program you have to BUILD IT, TEACH IT, ENFORCE IT!

Now go out there and make a difference.

Cheers,

Ron

P.S.

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