Take Advantage of This Time, Don’t Let it Take Advantage of You
With everything going on in the world, it is very easy to look at things in a negative light. It is very easy to fall into that trap of feeling sorry for yourself or being down on yourself and only looking at excuses to try and rationalize why things are the way they are. It is easy to start speaking ill of others and try to act like you have all the solutions yourself. Or, we could be looking at things with positivity and hope, hope that people are staying safe and their families are okay, hope that we can take care of the problem going on, and get back to our normal lives. Keeping positive can help us realize that we have a lot of time on our hands that can be used to better ourselves, and those around us.
As coaches, you need to appreciate the grind because that is what our lives are. When your season is going on, it is all about practice, film, recruiting, games, evaluating, and processing the season. There isn’t a lot of time for anything else as everything goes by so fast. Now TIME is all we have. So, what do we do with that time? We can get caught up on social media and reading articles of opinions and see ourselves in a trap of negativity throughout the world, or we can use this time to take a step back and start acting like students and teachers again. Knowledge needs to be shared.
Not one coach has all of the answers. Not one coach can say that they are perfect. Basketball is an imperfect game; no player can go their entire career without messing up and no coach can go an entire career without a blemish on their record. That is the beauty of this game that we all love. We can all learn how to do things better, and we all have something useful that we can share with others. So now that we have the time and that understanding that we can all still learn, how are we putting all of that to use?
Take advantage of what we have in front of us. Continue to work on your craft. The beauty of the world today is that we don’t need to physically be near someone to be able to learn or teach them. There are plenty of coaches that are running free webinar clinics, putting out videos, writing articles, and sharing older videos of different concepts of the game. Watch clinics online, search through videos and articles about different topics, and be ready to write down anything that is interesting to you. Create videos yourself with some of your knowledge, create your own writeups to share with others, and share older videos that you might have posted. Be the student AND the teacher.
Use this time to plan and prepare for your next move in coaching. Be ready to apply for the next job opening that comes available. Be ready to nail that next job interview that you get a call about. Be ready to set skill development standards when you can get back on the court with your players. Be ready to set your practice schedule for when your team gets back together. Realize that we are a community, we are together in this, and we all have knowledge to share.
