Play Your Cards Right By Milt Sherman

At the high school level, most coaches are responsible for the set-up of the gym for home contests and its subsequent return to normal use. Generally, the team does this work under the direct supervision of the coach. Some of the tasks involved with gym set-up are moving bleachers; moving competition and warm-up mats; setting up, mopping, and taping the mats; rolling out runners; setting up team chairs and the scoring tables, etc. Athletes like to compete but don't necessarily enjoy setting up the gym. These jobs require some organization or a couple jobs manage to get forgotten until the last minute when the coach and athletes should really be concentrating on the meet itself. Things can get worse after the meet when just as many things need to be done and the kids minds readily stray to parents, girlfriends, or possibly ducking out.

As a young coach I tended to "micromanage," feeling that I had to control every facet of the program in order to get things done right. With some experience, I came to realize that part of my job was to develop leadership among the athletes and you don't develop leadership skills while simply being told what to do all the time. I decided it was time to "play my cards right."

I divided the set-up jobs into three groups and listed the jobs on separate 3x5 cards. On the back of each card I printed the names of 1/3 of the team members. I circled one name on each card, a senior, to act as team leader of his group. Thus within the three cards were listed all the set-up jobs and all the team members. The only exceptions being a few details reserved for either me or the team manager.

On the day before our first home meet I pulled the three team leaders aside and explained what was expected of them using the 3x5 cards as a visual aid. At the end of practice I explained the organizational concept to the team and the necessary "chain of command." For example, individual athletes should not approach the coach with questions about meet set-up, but should rather ask their team leader. Also, that team leaders should check with the coach with any problems (ex. The warm-up mats are still locked up). The 3x5 cards were "lent" to the team leaders during set-up and break-down but otherwise kept thumb-tacked to the bulletin board in the wrestling room. By the second or third meet of the season the team leaders had typically memorized their routines and crew members and no longer needed the cards.

An important concept is that the athletes aren't finished until the team leader says they are and that when the team leader thinks his group is finished he checks in with the coach. Frequently, one of the younger athletes would ask me something like "Are we finished yet?" I would just smile and reply "Check with your team leader." Naturally, a few details may pop up outside of the assigned duties. The coach can then have a particular group attend to these. The kids naturally want to go home. At the end of the meet each group reverses its set-up jobs (ex. returning the competition mat to the wrestling room). With a finite set of jobs and a team leader in charge of a small group, camaraderie increases and the kids want to get the job done right and go home.

I've had reporters comment to me that ours was the only school they had covered in which the mat, chairs, etc. had all vanished before short interviews with the two coaches could be completed! Running a responsible program, and your won-loss record may seem more important, but at least part of running a successful program is learning to "Play Your Cards Right."

 
Retired from D.H. Conley H.S. in Greenville, NC, Milt Sherman racked up 470 victories in a storied career. He is a member of both the East Carolina University Hall of Fame and the North Carolina chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. He presently teaches at East Carolina University.