PLAYER ISSUES 2

The term Contingency Coach Leadership is derived from the Contingency Leadership Approach where leaders make decisions considering feedback and complexities from the environment and the needs of the participants. 

Our season plan had our team practicing 5 hours per week on non-competition weeks and 2.5 hours a week on competition weeks.  We averaged 3 hours and 45 minutes per week of practice.  Before the season started one of the players on the team, CH, approached us asking for extra help.  CH stands 6’2, but got into basketball late.  She is a high achiever who also wants to be successful on the court and is willing to put in the work.  But she is raw.  We asked CH to come 30 mins early to practice where one of our coaches would work one on one with her to improve her fundamental skills.

After the first 2 competitive weekends of the season it was apparent that our team needed more hours in the gym to address fundamental gaps and to remediate conceptual understanding.  We just graduated 7 players (whom we had coached for almost 6 seasons) and had an almost brand new team.  We thought their skills and understanding of basketball concepts was better than it actually was.  There was not enough time in our practices to address the fundamental deficiencies, to drive their conceptual understanding and to move forward tactically.  We chose to double our practice time on non-competitive weekends from 5 hours to 10 hours.

Trust me this is not something I wanted to do.  All of our coaches work full time.  Two of the coaches are married and have children who are active and participate in many programs on evenings and weekends.  None of us have a child or relative on our NT team we are coaching.  Approaching our competitive situation through the lens of a Contingency Approach offered us the clarity we needed.  In addition, the understanding that “we serve” our athletes guided decision making.  The players and families all committed fully to the new practice regiment.  The new practice plan gave us the opportunity to address the developmental needs of our players, which is always our first concern, but also drive the other catalysts of team performance to be competitive in our league.  For us it’s always about helping our athletes to be their best selves.

We’ve had situations in the past where we’ve pulled things off the table based on the situation and the needs of the participants.  Several seasons ago we were scheduled to compete in the top recruiting tournament in North America.  The problem was that the experience would only benefit 2 or 3 on the team.  In fact, the level of competition we would face at this event would require us to shorten the bench significantly if we wanted to put up competitive results.  Despite resistance and outright anger from some parents, we withdrew from this event because it didn’t serve the needs of all our participants.  This is another example of a contingency approach to leadership.