When Frosty Westering was the head football coach at Pacific Lutheran, he had only four coaches total on staff for a program that was a perennial national title contender. A friend of mine played on the 1999 National Championship team for PLU and told me that they did not really every have an “individual” time at practice for skills/drills for fundamentals, etc. What they did instead was what Frosty referred “goal sets.”
Each week, players would meet individually with their position coach to go over their goal sets. They would create a goal for four areas: Skills and Technique, Strength and Conditioning, Team Building and Attitude. For each area they would identify a goal and then create an action plan that was specific and measurable. Players would then track their progress over the week and either revise their goal at their next meeting or set a new one.
An example my friend used for the Skills and Technique was that he wanted to get better at catching fade, so his action plan was to catch 25 fades before practice and 25 after. At the end of the week, he could point to 250 reps that helped him get better at catching fades. Using what I learned from my friend, I developed this form for goal sets for my wrestlers at Redmond. You may also find this sheet from our team book on GAP=Goals, Attitude and Perseverance.
A very similar practice but somewhat lower maintenance has to do with creating and tracking “Accountability Cards.” Performance coach Brett Ledbetter uses a character checklist with a bunch of performance and moral skills. He asks them to select one performance skill and one moral skill they are going to focus on that week.
Here’s an example:
Performance Skill: Hardworking
Moral Skill: Appreciative
Once they’ve identified those, the athlete writes on a note card how she’s going to work on that. For hardworking, Ledbetter gives the example of “making 150 shots before practice 3x this week.” For the moral goal of being appreciative, an example would be “writing three thank-you notes to teammates.” At the end of the week, he asks his athletes if they get their card back. If they followed through and met their goals, the card is returned and a new card filled out. If not, they go another week working toward those goals. Over the course of the season, they track how many of their cards each athlete gets back. Ledbetter refers to these as “Accountability Cards.”
One of the goals of our athletic program is for each individual to have a “championship experience” regardless of their ability, role or skill level. While it will take some effort for every kid in your plan to both create weekly goal sets or accountability cards, I think the pay off is that you will intentionally build relationships, invest in the character development of your athletes, provide your athletes autonomy in their skill development and model for them a process of setting goals and achieving them.
Here is Ledbetter’s Character Checklist from his book What Drives Winning if you’re interested:
| Character Checklist | |
| Performance | Moral |
| Hardworking | Unselfish |
| Competitive | Honest |
| Positive | Respectful |
| Focused | Appreciative |
| Accountable | Humble |
| Courageous | Patient |
| Resilient | Loyal |
| Confident | Trustworthy |
| Enthusiastic | Trustwilling |
| Disciplined | Encouraging |
| Motivated | Socially Aware |
| Creative | Caring |
| Curious | Empathetic |
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