Top Coach for Sports Communication

Are you one of the 80% of golfers who never break 100? That’s correct; according to statistics fewer than 1 in 5 amateur golfers ever break 100! If you fall into the category of weekend golfer who plays with the same group of players, who hits about the same score every week, with an occasional par or maybe even a birdie in your round, who loses a couple of bucks at bingo, bango, bongo or a $2.00 Nassau bet, you could likely benefit from some kind of golf training. Many golfers can improve their golf swing just by going to the driving range, many more just end up practicing the same flawed golf swing until they get really good at it. These are the golfers who really need some sort of golf training aid or program in order to improve their golfing skills.

Golf; being a lifetime sport that is accessible to almost everyone is growing by leaps and bounds. People from all around the world are joining the sport partly due to the media attention paid to some of the super stars on the PGA, LPGA and other professional tours…stars like Michelle Wie, Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus. Of course not everyone can play like Michelle, Tiger or Jack. Most of us feel we are lucky to make par on a hole, let alone birdie or eagle.

However we can learn a valuable lesson by paying attention to how these super stars and most other serious golfers prepare for competition. Some people think that these super stars already have all of the knowledge of the golf swing that they need. Far from it, evidenced by the large and growing cadre of golf coaches and swing guru’s that ply their trade with pro golfers. Check the bio’s of people like Rick Smith, Chuck Harmon, Dave Pelz, David Leadbetter and others too see who they are working with, you may be surprised to find the names of many of the super stars you are interested in, some of these golf coaches even travel the tour with the pro’s. If golfers of this caliber need to take lessons, and make use of swing coaches, it just makes sense that average golfers could also need help.

So what kind of instruction is available? Pick up any golf magazine or go to any of the golf superstores, go online, ask your golf course pro, you will be amazed at the variety or swing training aids, DVD or VHS lessons, books and other self help items you can find. The main question is do they work? Ask other golfers you know, they may have tried some of these items. Higher up the price scale are golf schools. There are more than 1000 golf schools listed online, in various golf magazines, they can be from half day to weeklong schools, and some include lodging and meals. They range in price from affordable to ridiculous. When searching for a golf school, check for what you can afford. Read the course syllabus to see what will be taught, look for smaller instructor to student ratios, and ask other golfers that may have gone what they gained. Finally do not overlook your local golf professional, these are golfers who have chosen to make golf course management and golf training their life’s work, many of them were amateur and/or college golf stars, some were or still are touring professionals. Ask around to find out who is really knowledgeable and good at giving instruction in your area. You will most likely find that one or two names come up more often than others. Schedule a lesson or a series of lessons.

Most importantly whatever method of golf training you choose, practice what you learn; if it does not work as well as you had hoped, try again, leaning is a lifelong experience. If you take the time to learn how to play the game and really improve your golf swing, you can look forward to many years of a satisfying sport, rather than years of frustration.

So who is the most powerful coach in sports today? Nick Saban of Alabama according to Forbes magazine (9-1-08 issue). Forbes wastes no time in anoiting Saban as the best of the best and ahead of the rest when it comes to being the most powerful sports coach in our time.

While God-fearing, rabid fans in Alabama recognize that Saban is not God, they certainly think he is a god in the sense that he is a superhuman being who has power over human fortunes, namely the Crimson Tide.

What is unique about Saban’s stature, as Forbes points out, is that Saban’s 8-year, $32 million contract gives him complete and absolute control over every aspect of Alabama’s football program-recruiting, coaching, business administration and public relations. No other coach of any other sport enjoys such an advantage, if in fact it does turn out to be an advantage. Time will tell.

Until success becomes evident, Saban’s contract also has some very special perks, like 25 hours for his private use of a university airplane, two cars and a country club membership, all extras that make his annual compensation package closer to $5 million per year. He can also leave the school at any time without financial penalty, a rarity in big-time college coaching contracts.

His contract remains among the highest after his first year on the job, and his contract is bigger than all but a handful of NFL coaches.

No coach, according to Forbes, can match Saban’s combination of money, control and influence, and that includes all coaches in the professional leagues. Suffice to say that Saban, and his agent, James E. Sexton II, know a thing or two about how to negotiate an exceptional professional contract.

Alabama can afford Saban. The Crimson Tide football program generated $52 million in revenue last year (yes, college football is BIG business), and had an estimated $32 million in profit. Yikes, that is major profit. How would you like to run a business that generates $52 million in revenue and has a profit of 61%.

Taxpayers in Alabama can also relax as well since not a cent of Saban’s contract is paid by student or taxpayer money, it all comes out of the university’s football program budget, which also funds 77% of the athletic department, including nonrevenue producing sports.

It is Saban who has been tabbed to lift the fortunes of Alabama back to the glory years the Crimson Tide experienced under Paul “Bear” Bryant, who won 6 national championships and 13 SEC championships. When Bryant retired in 1982, Alabama’s football success took a dramatic drop in national prestige.

So how much of an impact has Saban had after his first year? Well, the team went 7-6 and beat Colorado in the Independence Bowl. Saban’s first spring practice game drew 92,000 fans (you read it right). The waiting list for season tickets tripled to 10,000 after Saban’s arrival. His recruiting class this year was rated No. 1 nationally by a consensus of tracking services.

Saban is a control freak (Alabama football practices are all but closed, and he personally authorizes all interviews with his players and coaches), but he is also very successful at what he does. He resurrected football programs at Michigan State (from squat to a 9-2 season in 5 years with 4 bowl games) and Louisiana State (a 48-16 record in 5 years, 5 bowl games, 2 SEC titles and a national championship) before arriving at ‘Bama.

University of Alabama’s president, Robert Witt, is fine with everything going on in its athletic program. There have been 100,000 donors to the university’s recent $500 million capital campaign, many of whom are ardent football supporters.

So how will Alabama do this year? Probably very well. With Saban, you either produce on the field or you will be nursing splinters on your backside riding the bench. Nick Saban expects to win, not occasionally, but every bloody time.

That is very hard to do in the SEC, but for $4 million a year you learn to outthink, outwork and out recruit your opponents. Saban has some talent coming, and nothing beats talent when talent shows up to play.

Copyright ? 2008 Ed Bagley

Coaching youth sports is a challenge. Most of our kids are really happy to have us step up to the plate and coach and, despite the time we give up, most parents find the experience equally rewarding. However, there are some major things that every coach needs to do and understand before they start the season: 1) coach with the proper attitude; 2) coach with the proper fundamentals; and, 3) learn and teach the difference between the “Dad Hat” and the “Coach Hat”.

Coaching the Right Attitude

We all love our kids and, let’s face it; we also love playing sports with our kids. For me, it’s the way that I spend most of my free time and it is right up there as one of my favorite things to do. That being said, I also need to realize that statistically, none of the kids that I coach will ever play professional sports, nearly all of them will not play sports in college, and many of them will not even play varsity sports in high school. So, what does this mean for us as a coach? We need to emphasize all the other aspects of sports and the life lessons that make us love playing the game. Mostly, we need to make the experience fun!

In 1988, Robert Fulghum wrote the book “All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten”. I’ve often told people that you can learn everything you need to know by playing sports – especially youth sports. Many of the same lessons apply, but on an even bigger scale where kids learn success and failure, wining and losing, sportsmanship and teamwork, and how to respond in many pressure situations. None of these are easy lessons. Winning with grace is just as hard to teach as losing with dignity. How can you do this and make sure that everybody has a great season? That’s the trick.

Every team you ever coach, especially teams with younger kids, will be split between kids that are talented and kids that are not. The goal that you have as a coach is to make sure that every one of those kids has a great experience and wants to play again next year. I take the most pride in the job I did as a coach when the worst kid on the team loves the sport and keeps playing year after year. The way that I do this is to emphasize things other than on field performance – I try to stress effort, trying your best and hustle.

There are several practical things that you can do to emphasize these “other” characteristics. In basketball, for example, instead of emphasizing and keeping stats for scoring, keep stats on hustle, picks set, good defense, rebounds, filling a lane, or just being in the right position. After every game, point out something positive that every kid did during the game. Award a point for each time a kid does something you emphasize and give stars or sew on patches when points are accumulated. You’ll see that these kids will do anything to get a star on their uniform, even pay attention in practice!

Coaching the Right Fundamentals

Kids of any age can learn to do things properly. They may not have the motor skills developed yet, but they can at least try to do it right. One of my favorite misconceptions is that “practice makes perfect”. That’s totally wrong; practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes PERMANENT. What I try to teach is: “Perfect Practice Makes Permanently Perfect”. That’s a pretty big difference!

Of course, this really changes things for a youth coach because we need to teach the correct fundamentals or we’ll simply be reinforcing the bad habits kids develop. The hardest thing to do as a coach is to try and correct a flaw that a kid has developed over years of “practice”. This is even harder when the kid is good, because correcting the fundamental flaw generally means that getting worse before getting better. That means the kid is going to be reluctant to try this “new” way and may not stick it out. In the long run, the difference could be huge. While we’ve already acknowledged that that we’re not developing professional athletes, there is no reason to limit the ceiling on how well each child may develop. Coach’s Corner, Continued

The solution is simple: we need to learn the right fundamentals before we start coaching. It’s a responsibility that we accept when we volunteer to coach. Now, up front, I want to make sure to state that most of us think we know much more about sports than we really do. We think that because we played and we were pretty good that we clearly know how to teach a kid to play baseball or basketball. That’s simply not true. Much of what we learned was wrong. We may also not know the right way to communicate what we know to kids. Or, we may not know anything about the sport if we’re stepping in and coaching soccer or another sport that wasn’t “big” when we were young.

Fortunately, there is help. Many leagues do a good job teaching their coaches the fundamentals of the game. Some leagues even offer mandatory coaching clinics for their coaches. These are really good starts, but generally not enough – especially as the kids you coach get older and better. Before every season that I coach, I’ll watch several instructional tapes to review the fundamentals and also learn new material. I re-watch tapes, often with my kids that we’ve seen before and buy a couple of new ones to add some wrinkles. Of course, at SportsKids.com, we do offer 1,000’s of instructional books and videos, but the point of this section is to simply say to use whatever method you choose to make sure that you teach correct fundamentals. Every kid, even young kids, can learn with good coaching and remember: “Practice makes Permanent”.

The “Dad Hat” and the “Coach Hat”

There is a huge difference between being a “Dad” and being a “Coach”. Each has different responsibilities and relationships with the kids. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of overlap between the two roles. I literally have two hats: one says “Dad” and the other says “Coach”. Over the years, my kids and I have learned to separate the two so I don’t wear the hats too often, but it does make the distinction more literal. Coaching your own children is one of the real challenges of youth sports because sometimes, you child wants or expects to have a dad when you’re the team’s coach. If you can separate these roles, and both of your expectations, you and your child will have a much better youth sports experience.

Probably more so than any other, golf is a game that is played in the mind as much as played on the course. Even the worlds top professional players have had blips and moments of doubt that have threatened their entire career and have had to seek professional assistance to improve their game. And if professional players can struggle with doubts and mental issues in their play, there is no doubt that it can be something that greatly affects an amateur player. There is a growing market of opportunities for players to improve the mental side of their approach to playing and it is clear that more people are improving this aspect of their play.

The level of mental thought that now goes into the game has gone to such an extent that there are companies offering hypnosis CDs and techniques to improve your golf play. No doubt part of this has been driven by market forces and companies wanting to make profit but it has had a great impact on how a golfer sets out to play. Unfortunately though, this impact on the mental side has went so far that it is probably now causing a negative impact on golfers over-thinking their game. Like so many other aspects of golf, over-thinking is as bad as under-thinking and there has to be a balance struck for a golfer to consistently perform to their best.

When you consider your own form of play, you will probably realize your own mental approach to your game will tend to focus on the negatives and play down the positives. Golf is a restrained and civilized game and it has almost been seen to be wrong to celebrating or making the most of your good shots. This has led to a culture of over analysis of shots which for many players can lead to nagging worries that crop up regularly in their play.

It is a common occurrence for players in the 19th hole to look back on their round and pick out poor shots or negative holes they played. Due to this, it can often get into a players mind that they have problems with a particular course or round which will start to become a problem every time they play. The term bogey has a specific meaning in golf but in the more general world, a bogey hole would be one that seems to have a subconscious impact on a player’s performance. The minute a golfer starts to think they have problems with a specific hole, they will definitely start to have difficulties with it. This means that a level of thinking and over thinking can create anxiety and nervousness in a golfer’s style of play which is almost guaranteed to cause problems.

At its best, golf is a simple game and it is best when it is played simply. The real enjoyment of a round of gold for many people comes in the ability to switch off from the pressures of normal life and to have some time spent relaxing and not thinking too much. There is obviously a sporting and competitive edge that appeals to many players but players who are relaxed have a greater opportunity of playing to their best whenever they play.

It may not be possible for everyone to reduce how often or how intensely they think about their golf but it is still possible to manage their style of play better. If a golfer can balance out their negative thoughts and concerns with some positive affirmation of their play or an acceptance of what holes are good for them, they can balance out their approach. Not everyone can completely blank out the mental approach to the game so by at least having some positive aspirations in their mind, they will have a chance of playing better.

Golf is a major industry today and there are thousands of companies all wanting their share of a golfers disposable income and this has changed the way that people think about the game. Technological enhancements has made the products of today far more advantageous than a few generations ago and there is now a large focus on the mental approach of a golfer.

This has inevitably led to many people over thinking their style of play and how they approach certain holes or courses and has had as negative an impact on certain players as it has improved the games of others.

It will be impossible to convince players they should entirely blank out any mental consideration of their style of play but there is a growing need for players to understand that thinking is not going to cure every problem on a golf course. In some cases, it can bring problems to a golfer when they previously had none.