Purpose: to establish a standard by increasing the level of integrity and improve the character of all athletes: one player and one day at a time.

The more you pour into today’s player, the more they have to give. 

Rebounding from Adversity

Sports are an emotional rollercoaster. The wins are great. Losses hurt. Every season has their own unique personality but one thing is consistent: there is always adversity to overcome. The teams who are able to overcome and fight through adversity are usually the teams that are more successful in the end.   And teams that can successfully rebound from adversity are able to do so because they have leaders in their programs skilled to fight through the challenges.

Some players overcome adversity while others are overcome by the adversity. Build a team of players built to overcome adversity that is certain to come.

Conversation Starters:

-How 1-2 players tell a story about a time they overcame adversity.
-Have some of the team share 1-2 stories of how the team has overcome adversity?

Story: Most know of Beethoven as the great musician that he was. He is arguably the most historic musician ever.   During the height of his career most are unaware that he began to lose his hearing and eventually became completely deaf. Becoming deaf is difficult to overcome especially for someone in music and needs to hear the music he’s making.

Rather then giving up or giving in to his adversity, Beethoven sawed the legs off his piano so he could set it on the floor and feel the vibrations as played.   His symphony #9 which is one of his most iconic pieces, he never actually “heard” that piece.

Lesson: rather then complaining about the circumstances surrounding his adversity, Beethoven took the time to figure out how to get past it and created a solution. How are you doing when adversity hits?

Teaching illustration’s/Demonstrations:

-Create a role-playing scenario with a few of the players. Create 1-2 hypothetical situations of adversity (ineligible for a period of time, injury, consecutive losing streak) and have them create the most favorable chain of events to overcome the adversity. Begin to challenge them and allow them to visualize overcoming adversity.   Provide critiques.

Lesson: this allows them to experience overcoming adversity in a proactive manner prior to the adversity hitting.

Quotes:

-A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
-Prosperity makes great friends, adversity tries them.
-Adversity is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
-Adversity causes some to break and others to break records… which are you?

Learning Traits:

-Understand that adversity is designed to teach, not debilitate.
-When adversity hits, step out of it and then think through how to get through it.
-Identify the things you can learn from the adversity to help you become better in the future.
-Remember why you started in the first place.
-Stay positive!

Action Items:

-Play the “No Complaining” game. Ask each player to count how many minutes they think they spent complaining the previous week? Communicate to them that every minute spent complaining is a minute wasted on fixing the issue.Moving forward, ask the players to track how many minutes they’ve complained each week. Lets say a player says 12-minutes, then have that player spend 12-minutes brainstorming ways to improve the team or situation to make up for minutes they wasted complaining.

-Give Adversity report cards. Every time adversity hits, communicate to the player that you will be following up with them 72-96 hours afterwards and will like them to give themselves a “grade” on their performance up until that point on overcoming the adversity.