These articles were written and contributed by Scott Rosberg

Theme # 1

Character/Integrity

This post is part of a series of short posts based on the Team Themes & Quotes in my gift booklet “Senior Salute.”  Today’s post is on the theme of “Character/Integrity.” We start with the most important one of all because without Character/Integrity, any other behavioral characteristic that you have or claim to have will be doubted. Integrity is the most important of all the traits that one must have to be successful in life.

Being a person of integrity is especially critical for people in leadership positions or those who aspire to become leaders. People will not follow leaders for very long who do not have integrity because they can’t be trusted. The moment bad character and a lack of integrity are exposed, people start “heading for the hills” away from the supposed leader. This is because while the person said that s/he stood for certain things or certain standards, once it is found out that the person really did not live by those standards, s/he can no longer be trusted to be telling the truth.

However, integrity and great character are required of people in all walks and stages of life, not just leaders. No matter what you do in this world, if you interact with others, you must live with integrity if you want people to trust you. Trust is a key building block of any solid relationship, and trust starts with integrity.

Integrity is basically when your actions and your beliefs are in alignment. When you say you have certain standards and values, and then you go out and live by those standards and values, you show yourself to be a person of integrity and character. You are someone who walks your talk. Your word is good. Your signature has value. People know that what you say and what you do will be one and the same.

However, when you claim certain standards, and then when faced with a choice, choose to act in a way that is not accordance with your standards, you are living a lie, and you are showing yourself to be a person who lacks integrity.

For instance, student-athletes are often asked to sign an athletic contract. Their signature on that athletic contract is saying, “I will live by the standards and rules set forth in this document.” However, the person who lacks integrity signs the contract and then goes out and does whatever s/he wants to do without regard to what the standards and rules have set forth as the proper behavior for them to exhibit.

As you make your way through life, choose to walk the path of great character and integrity. As Alan Simpson once stated, “If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.”

Theme # 2 – Trust

This post is the second in a series of short posts based on the Team Themes & Quotes in my gift booklet “Senior Salute.” Today’s post is on the theme of “Trust.” Trust is a key piece to any relationship. In the last post, I discussed how important character/integrity are to the relationships that you have with people. I said that character/integrity are absolutely vital for anyone in a leadership position. Integrity is one of the key ingredients to creating trust in others, and leaders have to have the trust of the people they lead.

However, trust is not critical only for leaders. For any relationship you develop with someone, there must be trust for that relationship to thrive. Trust allows massive growth in the relationship. It allows people to speak openly, honestly, and freely with the other person. This is critical for the relationship to grow and develop and become something deep and meaningful.

The moment trust is broken, the relationship breaks down. Open, honest, and clear communication is stunted or halted completely. When people don’t trust one another, they shut themselves off from the other person. A breach of trust stifles any chance for true growth to occur.

So how do you create trust? Bruce Brown of Proactive Coaching has an outstanding booklet called “The Impact of Trust.” In the booklet and the presentation based on the booklet, Brown discusses what I call the 3 C’s of trust – Competence, Caring and Character. To develop trust with others, you must be competent in your field, you must care about others, and you must be a person of character. I always add another C to the mix – Consistency. To create and develop real trust with others, you must demonstrate your competence, caring, and character consistently over time. (I have just scratched the surface here. To delve deep into these concepts, I highly recommend you pick up “The Impact of Trust” at the Proactive Coaching website – www.proactivecoaching.info.)

Who do you trust? Why? When you think about the people you trust, chances are that the 4 C’s mentioned above are key elements to your level of trust in them. Now the big question becomes this – Who trusts you? Are you doing those same things in your relationships that those people you trust are doing in their relationship with you? If not, it is time to start. This is the best way to develop the trust necessary for you to have a trusting, fruitful, meaningful relationship with those people.

Click here to see: Team Themes for Life #3 and #4

“Senior Salute” is a gift booklet for coaches, parents, or anyone else to give to senior athletes at the end of their season. It covers 7 different team themes that have played and will continue to play a role in athletes’ lives – Character/Integrity, Trust, Toughness, Passion, Accountability, Teamwork, & Success. There are quotes from famous (and not-so-famous) people in support of each theme. Finally, the inside front cover is set up for people to write a personal note to their senior. Individual copies of “Senior Salute” cost $6.00, but a 10-pack is only $50.00. You can also purchase gift envelopes to put them in. To purchase “Senior Salute” or to download the “Introduction and First Chapter Theme & Quotes” for Free, go to the Coach with Character website.

This article is provided by Coaches Network

Why do you need to increase cohesion on your team? As sports psychologist Stefanie A. Latham, Ph.D.,wrote in a Power Point presentation, entitled “The Team Building /Cohesion Relationship: What Every Coach Should Know to Get the Most out of Their Team,” winning teams do not succeed on talent alone. She writes: “Talent without teamwork equals trouble.”

Latham coached a premiere United States Volleyball Association club for five years with teams advancing to nationals every year. She left the world of coaching in 2003 to finish her Ph.D. in Sport Psychology, and served as the Chairwoman and Professor of Sport Science at Oklahoma City University for five years. She feels that team building maximizes potential because the team is focused on common goals. Not only does the practice of team building minimize conflicts, it will also make the season more enjoyable for the players.

Latham finds that coaches only 5-10% of practice time on team-building exercises. It’s not hard to implement the process of team building—it can consist of games or activities, or drills that will sharpen focus. These team building practices will help the team set goals, clear communication, improve positive imagery, build motivation and confidence.

The author list the following team building strategies:

• Hold regular team dinners

• Go to the movies together

• Have your team play a different sport

• Plan a preseason retreat or training camp

• Organize a team scavenger hunt

• Ask your player to switch positions for the day

• Create a contest to select a slogan or team theme

Latham details two unique team-building games:

1. Balloon Train: Have twice as many balloons as you have players. Set up a slalom course using 4-6 cones and obstacles—zigzag the cones 5-10 yards away from each other. The players line up in straight single file line with inflated balloon between their navel and the back of a teammate who is in front of them. The players walk through the course together as a team without busting balloons. Afterwards, have each player shares one thought on the activity. “The activity requires working closely together to achieve a common goal,” Latham says.

2. Strung Together: Have a large ball of string. Team members sit down in a big circle. Hand the ball of string to one player and have him or her hold one end of it. The player tosses the ball of string to another teammate while holding the end of the string. The player then talks about all the things the team needs from that teammate who received the ball of string. Then the coach encourages others to add to the statement. That player holds part of the strong and tosses the ball to another player, and the process starts over. Once everyone is holding a piece of the string (including the coach), the players discuss their perceptions of what the activity represents—i.e., everyone is dependant on each other in some way because of the connections of the string. Ask your players to talk about what it means to be connected, how it relates to responsibility, accountability, and trust. Have them discuss what happens if connections are cut or a person lets go of the string

Latham strongly recommends that the coach works with team members to determine the proper team building activity—a strategy that is effective with one team may not work with another.

She says the role of the coach is to facilitate discussion and keep the activity on track. “Focus on solutions, not the problems,” Latham writes.

Culture Trumps Everything
The Power of the Setting

By Dr. Cory Dobbs

*This Following is An Excerpt from the workshop workbook: A Leader in Every Locker.

Authors Note: The workshop workbook for A Leader in Every Locker(excerpt below) provides a very disruptive approach to team building. The idea of a leader in every locker is borderline laughable according to most coaches. I know, I’ve been presenting this idea and approach to coaches for some time. Most find it difficult to conceive of, but that’s the point. It wouldn’t be disruptive if it fit with everyone’s thinking and practice. The notion of a leader in every locker sounds like chaos. It’s quite the opposite. It is an organized learning system that shapes a high-performing culture by shattering long-standing socially conditioned traditions of leadership.

Why do some team cultures inspire energy and commitment, instilling loyalty and persistence, while others create individualism, in-fighting, diminish participant effort and tarnish the value of teamwork? Do some coaches have access to a magical elixir for creating a high-impact context, while others haven’t a clue? I doubt it. So what’s going on?

The conventional view of student-athlete leadership is that of a strong preference for appointing or electing team captains. The Academy for Sport Leadership’s research on the selection of a team’s captains reveals that close to eighty-percent of all captains are viewed by their teammates as extraverts. So team leadership starts with extraversion, but it’s also linked closely to playing ability. Likewise, our research shows that well over eighty-percent of all team captains are starters. The very idea of a team captain being a starting player is somewhat of a sacred cow. Thanks to this mythos, we find that players near the end of the bench are least likely to provide substantial leadership. Also, according to the players, team captains are expected to motivate and inspire teammates, with their doing so mostly by acting as a model of what to do. In other words, the defining criteria for choosing a team captain has more to do with one’s disposition—internal characteristics that reside within the individual—than fit together with the external context and the needs of the situation.

The central premise of this workshop workbook is that many of the leadership practices of sports teams are in fact backfiring because of the errant assumptions about who can lead. The scheme of a leader in every locker explores the complex ideas about dispositional (personal) versus situational determinants of behavior.

It turns out that social forces subtly and profoundly influence attitudes and behaviors; more so than most people are willing to acknowledge. Social effects hold immense power to shape who we are, both at a moment in time as well as over time. This principle leads to the social phenomenon that where you are shapes who you are; which flies in the face of accepted thinking that dispositions are the drivers. What’s more, student‐athletes are highly sensitive to the social forces, both explicit and implicit, embedded within an event, a situation, a context, and the team’s culture. Yet, too often coaches underestimate the impact of situational aspects—the context, the culture, and the circumstances—that evoke and guide a player’s behavior. After all, it’s much easier to attribute an individual’s behavior to his or her personality than explore the complex social situational determinants of one’s attitude and consequently his or her actions.

Furthermore, when we encounter a social situation most of us seamlessly adjust who we are to accommodate the social setting, to fit into the context. That is, we adapt to the environment. Such transitions are, for the most part smooth and seldom explicitly reflected upon. Not long ago I was admitted to a hospital for a surgical procedure. From the moment I walked in the door to check in I unconsciously acted like a patient. I played the role of a patient when the nurse was prepping me, willingly taking orders from someone I only met minutes ago. This is why leaders of great organizations declare that culture trumps all. The constant dynamic interplay between players and coaches holds great sway over the performance capability of a team. Culture influences are many micro-actions, giving the setting potency to control our behavior in the moment.

Social psychologists tell us that too often we inflate the importance of such things as one’s personality traits and dispositions as a convenient way to explain the behavior of others. When we do this, we fail to recognize and account for the importance of situational factors (immediate and cultural). The point I want to make here is that understanding the context—situationism rather than dispositionalism—provides insights into the potent forces eliciting or constraining a player’s behavior. For instance, in my observational research I have found that the players on the practice field closest in proximity to the coach are more likely to “mimic” the coach than those off in the distance. For example, if a coach is encouraging her team with positive words those players nearest to the coach will offer similar encouragement too. And if the coach is reprimanding a player, those closest to the coach are more likely to express disapproval to the offending teammate than those furthest from the event. All this is done outside the consciousness of those involved, but triggered by the situation. As you can see, the subtle nuance of the situation serves as a compelling force for producing behavior.

Add to this the factor that many coaches I’ve studied limit the ways in which they “describe” reality. Too often they don’t account for the multiple ways in which a situation can be viewed. “We didn’t rebound well last night,” says the head coach reading the game stats sheet. Her assistants all shake their head in agreement. However, maybe the other team shot really well making rebounds a casualty on the stats sheet. Certainly this is a simple situation, but coach’s, like historians, have the power of defining reality. Moreover, coaches often discount how their interpretations are shaped by an already constructed mental schema of a player, usually focused on the traits or disposition of the athlete. “He’s too passive, that’s why he won’t challenge his teammates,” comments the coach, attributing the player’s behavior to his personality rather than the broader context in which the behavior takes place.

Simple truths are often the hardest to come to. The simple truth here concerns the power and subtlety of situational influences on behavior. In the case of the team sport environment in which players perform and take action, the culture impacts the hearts, minds, and behavior—for good or bad. And when it comes to leadership, if you develop a leader in every locker you change the culture. Today, the more forward thinking coaches are adopting the approach of a leader in every locker.

To find out more about and order Sport Leadership Books authored by Dr. Dobbs including Coaching for Leadership, click this link: The Academy for Sport Leadership Books

About the Author

A former basketball coach, Cory’s coaching background includes experience at the NCAA DII, NJCAA, and high school levels of competition. While coaching, he researched and developed the transformative Becoming a Team Leader program for student-athletes. Cory has worked with professional athletes, collegiate athletic programs and high schools teaching leadership as a part of the sports experience and education process. Cory cut his teeth as a corporate leader with Fortune 500 member, The Dial Corp. As a consultant and trainer Dr. Dobbs has worked with such organizations as American Express, Honeywell, and Avnet.

Cory has taught a variety of courses on leadership and change for the following universities:

Northern Arizona University (Graduate Schools of Business and Education)

Ohio University (Graduate School of Education / Management and Leadership in Sport)

Grand Canyon University (Sports Marketing and Sports Management in the Colangelo School of Sports Business)

Visit www.corydobbs.com to read Cory’s leadership blog.

Mike Neighbors is one of the best coaches around to study for the way that he thinks about coaching.

These are some notes on team building from a presentation he made entitled “The Top 25 Things I have Stolen.”

Probably most of these concepts you already know, but if you’re like me, it helps to continually read, revisit, and review the things I believe to keep me focused on them rather than focusing solely on the urgent items that come across our desks every day. I also think that some of the concepts are worth considering sharing with your team.

 

ATTITUDE IS THE DIFFERENCE MAKER Janet Wood, John C. Maxwell

ATTITUDE is NOT everything. A great ATTITUDE does NOT mean we will be successful at whatever we dream.

There are things our ATTITUDE can do and things it can not do.

CANNOT DO:
1) Your attitude cannot substitute for competence
2) Your attitude cannot substitute for experience
3) Your attitude cannot change the facts
4) Your attitude cannot substitute for personal growth
5) Your attitude will not stay good automatically

CAN DO:
1) Your attitude can make a difference in your approach to life
2) Your attitude can make a difference in your relationships with people
3) Your attitude can make a difference in how you face challenges
4) Your attitude can make a difference

THE BIG 5 ATTITUDE OBSTACLES:
1. Discouragement: Are you a splatter or a bouncer?
2. Change: AM/FM, cassette deck, cd player, IPOD jack
3. Problems: flee it, forget it, fight it, face it
4. Fear: breeds fear, causes inaction, weakens us, wastes energy, inhibits potential
5. Failure: wills/won’ts/cants

85% Rule –Ronnie Tollet, Jeff Jannsen

Jeff Janssen is widely considered the world’s top expert on sports leadership. He helps coaches and athletes become world class leaders in athletics, academics, and life. He is the chief architect and lead instructor for cutting edge Leadership Academies at North Carolina, Stanford, Yale, and PITT. As the founder of Janssen Sports Leadership Center, Janssen associates are highly sought after speakers at many of the nation’s top athletic departments including UCLA, Michigan,Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Florida State, LSU, Arizona, and Xavier.

Jeff has lots of great thoughts, ideas, and exercises on developing leadership. In his travels he gets to visit face-to-face with the winningest coaches in sports. He is afforded the opportunity to pick the brains of the coaches and the players. His research is cutting edge. His access to these programs has produced some of the most useable data in existence.

His COMMITMENT CONTINUUM is the one that struck home the hardest with me because of an exercise he did with all of our programs. He asked each coach to list their team roster. Beside each player we were asked to label each player in one of the following categories:

Resistant: complain about coaches, teammates, workouts, conditioning team rules, pull against the goals of team
Reluctant: half effort, wait and see attitude, skeptical, hesitantly do what is asked, not bought in totally
Existent: are there in body but not in mind or spirit, show up but give little, apathetic toward team, go through motions
Compliant: will do what is asked by coaches and leaders, do just enough to get by, have to be pushed to start
Committed: go the extra mile, self motivated, take initiative, will do right even when you aren’t watching
Compelled: higher standard people, no matter the adversity they are there 100%, prepare, train and compete at highest level

After we labeled each player, we were asked to determine what % of our team were on the proper side of the continuum. He then walked around the room looking at the results and correctly predicted every team’s season results. He could tell so many things from this one exercise. But the main thing that stuck with me was that in all of his research NO TEAM HAS EVER WON A CHAMPIONSHIP WITHOUT 85% of the players being Compliant, Committed or Compelled.

Never!!! That’s some useable stuff. His book, The Team Captain’s Leadership Manual
speaks of how to move players from level to level and strategies for dealing with situations that really effect your team and your efforts.

 

Time for a Boost

Syndicated from AthleticManagement.com with permission.

Looking for people to help out at home games? For additional funds to travel or purchase  new uniforms? Upgrading your support group is often a great solution.

By Caitlin Hayes

For Armijo (Calif.) High School, it ensures there are new volleyballs every year. For Ohio State University, it means upgrades to the locker room. At Allen (Texas) High School, it pays for the end-of-year banquet. And for Florida Southern College, it will fund a trip to Italy this summer.

That’s the power of a strong booster club—and the reason many teams are working hard to upgrade theirs. While booster clubs have long been a part of programs, volleyball coaches are finding ways to make them more effective.

“Our booster club provides supplemental income to help us create an incredible program,” says Jill Stephens, Head Coach at Florida Southern. “But there are other benefits, too. A lot of our boosters have supported us forever—they’ve become like family. It’s so special when I can connect with them and introduce them to our new players and families. It really adds to our program.”

At the high school level, booster clubs can also take many responsibilities off a coach’s plate. “Before we had our booster club really set up, I worried about everything—the activities between games and whether we had enough volunteers and a host of other things,” says Tom Weko, Head Coach at Mounds View (Minn.) High School. “Now, we’re at the point where I just have to worry about coaching.”

From high school parent groups to donor-driven entities at the collegiate level, volleyball programs are tapping into the concept in bigger and better ways. In this article, coaches provide advice for starting or revamping this crucial element of any team’s success.

UP & RUNNING

Whether a support group is non-existent or flagging, the first step to building it up is defining its goals. This will vary from team to team, depending on the level of play, the school culture, and what supporters are looking for.

At Allen, Head Coach Kelley Gregoriew looks to the current group of parents to define how the program will evolve. “I think I’ve only missed one booster club meeting in 23 years,” she says. “I like to hear their ideas and see what direction they’re going in and what they’re excited about. And I give my approval to their ideas and update them on anything they need to know.”

With the booster club at Mounds View, there is an emphasis on players’ families having decision-making power. “The parents stay engaged in the program when we ask them to volunteer and to be a part of it,” says Weko. “Also, when they join the boosters, they can vote. They get to choose the things that will enhance the program. That choice gives them an investment in the team and the direction we’re going.”

At Florida Southern, the program benefits when the relationship between the boosters and the team is strong. This is accomplished through giving perks to donor-members, such as invitations to family weekend events and banquets and exclusive newsletters and updates on the squad’s progress.

“We try to meet up with our boosters whenever we can,” Stephens says. “We’re going to Oregon next year, and we’ll look up our boosters out there and try to see them. This past season, a couple in their 80s who are longtime supporters surprised me at an away game. I got to introduce them to the team, which was really special for me and for my players.”

Ohio State University has been working to reinvigorate its support group. Head Coach Geoffrey Carlston and his staff recently gave the club a name, The Scarlet Spikers, and they have been focusing their efforts on connecting with existing members and recruiting new donors.

“To engage friends of the program, we try to be really accessible,” says Carlston. “Our players are the ambassadors for anything we do, so we organize a lot of events after games, such as question and answer sessions and photo opportunities. When you get people interacting with the players, they tend to feel more connected to what you’re doing.”

Beyond the goals and culture of the group, most teams have found it effective to employ a structure. Allen’s club has a president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer, and regularly scheduled meetings allow the coach and the boosters to work together to accomplish objectives.

“The meetings are very structured and that helps keep people focused,” says Gregoriew. “The president runs the meeting and has an agenda that is sent to me in advance. I’m always an item on that agenda, so that I can update them on anything they need to know.”

Mounds View parents are organized by task. “Within our booster club, we have different chairs and committees for many things,” says Weko. “And then we ask all of the parents to volunteer for one committee. They sign up online so it’s pretty easy and organized, which is great. I don’t have to worry because I know that the parents are doing a great job.”

Putting a board together is on Carlston’s wish list. “That’s the direction I want to go, to make it more professional and organized,” he says. “We want a wide variety of people to make up the board—alumni, business sponsors, maybe even a parent of a player in the program. You don’t want to have just one contingency represented.”

Florida Southern has a looser structure, with no formal board. “Organizing the boosters is on me and my staff, but we’ve made it a part of our routine,” says Stephens. “Every year, we do a big mailing out to all of our alumni, and we add the recently graduated alumni, friends, and any new people who we want to involve with the program. This is our invitation to be a part of the booster club.”

 

Focus on Funding

Of all its benefits, a support group’s biggest function is generating funds for your program, whether by a direct donation or by running fundraisers. The money can go towards program necessities, or extras that give student-athletes unforgettable experiences.  “We’re funded quite well at Florida Southern, and there’s an emphasis on championship athletic programs,” says Stephens. “The money from our boosters allows us to travel to play in great competitions. Every four years, I try to do an international trip. This summer, we’re traveling to Italy for 10 days, so we’ve made an extra push with our booster club to raise the funds needed.”

Stephens and her staff created a “Europe” level of membership, where supporters could earmark their donations specifically to fund the trip. And to give credit where credit is due, donors at all levels are recognized on the booster club web page. Ohio State follows a similar model, with levels of membership corresponding to a donation amount.

“We use our discretionary funds for team building events, to help our coaches go to the Final Four, and for our athletes to go to Team USA tryouts,” says Carlston. “We also tap into it for any sort of overnight travel in the spring and for any All-American and Sweet Sixteen banners we hang, as well as any locker room upgrades. It’s great because 100 percent of that money comes into our program, and the school allows us to use it however we need to.”

High schools can’t rely solely on donations, so fundraising by the support group is a large part of its purpose. Allen High School’s booster club hosts three tournaments at the middle school, j.v., and varsity levels, taking in money from registration fees, concessions, and ticket sales. In recent years, they’ve also hosted a sand volleyball tournament and a serve-a-thon (see “New Ideas” on page 19).

“We used to do fundraisers like selling cookie dough or discount cards and things like that,” says Gregoriew. “But with the tournaments, the kids can go out there and enjoy playing, and it promotes the game.”

Mounds View is continually looking for new options. “We try to come up with as many different kinds of fundraisers as we can, and then we weed out the ones that don’t give the best return for the time we put in,” says Weko. “I personally don’t like having the girls go door to door, although it can be an effective way to get funds.

“We also have dues, which is one way to make sure the program has some guaranteed money before we have to do any fundraising,” he continues. “Not everybody is able to contribute the whole amount or even some, and that’s fine.”

And some booster clubs don’t require any membership fees. At Armijo, parents joining the group are asked to donate a new volleyball to the program. Head Coach Paige McConlogue says most of the booster funds are generated from concessions at games.

“We have built a good fan base so we make a lot of money from our concessions,” she says. “If your school doesn’t sell snacks at games, I’d say to consider it. We don’t do anything complicated, just chips, candy, soda, and pizza—all easy stuff.”

OTHER ROLES

Beyond raising funds, boosters can often do much more for a program. From running community service projects to improving the game-time experience, support groups can contribute greatly to the culture of a team.

“We try to use the talents that the parents have to add to our program,” says Weko. “Some of them cook for our carbo-loads. Others create the video for our end-of-season banquet. Next year, we’re going on a team-building camping trip, and they’ll organize that.”

“Our parents take charge of our specials, like middle school night and senior night,” says Gregoriew. “They do activities to get the crowd involved—fun games where fans try to serve the ball into hoops or catch balls into big sweatpants.

“They’ve also organized nights dedicated to the Special Olympics or breast cancer awareness,” she continues. “And the boosters are in charge of our team’s website, Twitter, and Facebook profiles. They get people to take pictures and video at the games and they post it afterwards. I’ve had parents continue to help with the website even after their daughters have graduated and gone to college. It’s an important part of our program. We use it to register schools for our tournaments, to advertise our sponsors, to take donations, to sign up volunteers—for a lot of things.”

At Armijo, the president of the booster club runs the team’s Facebook page, notifying members about game times, results, and events. “Everybody’s already on Facebook, so it works great,” says McConlogue. “Our president is really good about updating it, and it’s something I don’t have to worry about.”

    GIVING THANKS

With all that boosters do, it’s important to remember to thank them. Many coaches ask players to handwrite thank-you notes to members, and they make sure to toast the support group at end-of-season banquets. Stephens also highlights them in her newsletter.

“For example, one of our boosters helped us go to a Red Sox game when we went to Boston, so we took a picture in front of Fenway Park and included that in the newsletter,” she says. “It was a different way to thank them.”

Gregoriew uses a similar, although less formal, tactic. “At different times of the year, I send out an email saying how excited we are and how all of the teams have been working hard,” she says. “I give accolades to the players, and I make sure to thank parents for their support.”

Possibly most important is for the head coach to keep the boosters top of mind. “The booster club sometimes gets overlooked,” says McConlogue. “Nobody really sees them or knows all that they do. But they do so much, from being at games to fundraising. Without them, I would struggle to get everything done.”