Come Ready Or Never Start

Come

Ready

Or

Never.

Start

 

5 simple words.

Taken separately there is nothing special about any of them.  

But bundle them together in a simple and succinct declaration…and they define an attitude…a way of life.

Come Ready Or Never Start.

It’s a simple yet powerful mentality that I feel allows individuals of all ages to best reach their full potential and  achieve their goals in life.

My name is Pat Cavanaugh, founder of the Come Ready Or Never Start^TM mentality system that I strongly believe can positively affect the lives of young people. 

It did mine–allowing me to  achieve athletic and life goals that most people thought were not possible.

The purpose of this blog is to show you how the Come Ready Or Never Start^TM philosophy can greatly assist both kids and their parents experience the full potential that youth and interscholastic sports has to offer. 

I am a strong believer that sport participation by young people can teach kids life lessons that will allow them to succeed to their fullest abilities-both in athletics, in school and with their eventual adult careers. 

But I also firmly feel that parents can use the Come Ready Or Never Start^TM mentality system to help their children best experience the fullest joy of athletic participation. It will also be providing guidance so that athletics can properly teach their children the values and attitudes they will need to best succeed in both sports and school.

Since its inception the Come Ready Or Never Start^TM philosophy has been a powerful motivator to athletes of all ages.  It spawned a performance apparel brand-Crons® (www.crons.com ) – specializing in athletic gear that champions the mentality that it takes to be successful. 

It is my goal with this blog to show how the Come Ready or Never Start  mentality system can guide both children and their parents so they can work together to make the experience of athletics be a powerful and meaningful one in their lives-both as a builder of character and a way of achieving life goals that they may have thought out of reach.

The Value of Organized Sports

Come Ready or Never Start

The Value of Organized Team Sports for Youth

 

 

I am a big believer that participating in organized athletics—especially team sports—can teach values and life lessons that youngsters can use in their teenage years and beyond.  Noticed I said “can.”  This cannot be an automatic assumption.  Coaches and parents are key influencers when it comes to sport living up to its potential for building character.  Too often, because of a lack of guidance and proper reinforcement from coaches and parents, sport ends up creating ‘characters’ instead of building character.  

 

I have listed a few below.

 

Discipline

Sports can teach a child discipline in a palatable way while they participate in an activity they deeply enjoy.  They need discipline to learn the skills—the discipline to put in the time and preparation so they can maximize their performance.  They learn that if they have the discipline to what it takes to improve and excel—performance rewards can follow.  Often, they need discipline while participating in the sports themselves to maximize their chance of success.  They learn the lesson quickly—without that discipline they do experience the joy of victory.

 

Hard Work

Sports teach young people that you need to work hard to improve and reach your true athletic potential.   They learn that this mentality can make up for natural athletic talent when it comes to being an effective part of a team.  They learn that you can extend your potential by just making up your mind to outwork the other kids.  That’s part of the Come Ready or Never Start philosophy—Outwork the competition

 

Sacrifice

Kids learn that it takes a certain sacrifice on their part to participate on a team and contribute to the squad’s performance.  They may have to give up things (i.e. time playing video games; hanging out with friends; watching TV) in order to participate in the types of activities that will directly affect their sports skills and enjoyment of the sport. 

 

Teamwork

When your child grows up there is an excellent chance that he or she will be participating in a shared, group working environment that will require teamwork to be a success.  Team sports is a great model in which to learn the basics in meshing your efforts into a team format as one piece of the puzzle that must fit with the other pieces in order to create a environment of success.  They learn how the importance of the team supersedes the recognition of individual accomplishments—that by working together as a part of a group with a common goal, things can be accomplished that otherwise would be out of the reach of individuals.

 

Dealing with Success and Failure

Kids can learn how to be proud of their successes without demeaning their opponents.  They learn that accomplishments can be cherished so that the focus is on the pride that goes along with team success without letting an attitude of superiority drive their feelings toward their opponents.

Youngsters can also learn how to deal with failure—not winning the competition or accomplishing particular athletic goals.  They can be taught that any failure is just a temporary setback from which lessons can be learned in order to improve and have a better chance of success the next time.

 

Setting and Striving for Goals

This is my favorite.  Successful people are the ones who set short term and long term goals and focus their efforts on accomplishing these goals.  Organized athletics lends itself to setting both individual and team goals and then striving for those goals.  It does not matter the skill level of the young athlete or the level of accomplishment of the team.  Goals can be set that mirror the improvement desired and then a plan of action can be mapped out to reach those goals.  Likewise in life, youngsters will more likely succeed if  they are setting goals in school and other areas of lives.  They can transfer their athletic goal achieving lessons from athletics to other, more important areas of their lives.

 

Value of Practice and Preparation.

Come Ready or Never Start—that pretty much says it all when it comes to defining the importance of practice and preparation in succeeding in sports…or in life.  Youngsters can learn the value of preparation and practice in order to allow them to reach their goals as an individual or team.  They can experience the success that comes with the proper preparation…or the failure that comes when not enough focus is placed on putting the time in to practice and get better.  It’s much the same scenario in their school careers.

 

Overcoming Adversity

This is another one of my favorites.  Life isn’t fair and much of it involves overcoming setbacks and other adversity.  Youngsters can learn how to overcome adversity and temporary failures through the many situations they face in athletics, both in their preparation and during the competitions.  They can learn the mentality they need to both overcome and learn from adversity they face as they strive for their goals.  The goal can be just winning the particular game…or attaining a particular athletic goal.  Learning to overcome adversity is a mental skill that will serve them well for the rest of their lives.

 

 Visit www.crons.com.

 

 

 

 

  

Dealing With the Head Coach

Come Ready Or Never Start

The Relationship with the Head Coach

 

 Obviously, one of the most crucial roles in organized youth sports is the head coach.  This is also probably one of the most sensitive subjects for a number of reasons.  These coaches are not professionals, but volunteers.  They have different levels of understanding of the sport.  They have different motivations for volunteering.  They have different skill sets in dealing with young people.  They have different temperaments.  All can make for a challenging relationship with their players and the parents.  The Come Ready or Never Start philosophy does address some basic elements of how both kids and their parents should interact with coaches.

 

In the beginning years and formative experience in organized sports (1^st – 4^th grades), it’s all about setting expectations and communicating ground rules before the season starts.   Parents must communicate with the coach to make sure they thoroughly understand the ground rules of the league and the overall league philosophy.  They then must communicate those to their children and constantly reinforce them during the season. 

 

In addition, parents need to sit down with their children to set expectations for their interactions with their coaches.  Some of those expectations are as follows:

 

• Kids should behave during practices and games as if they are with mom or dad.
• Kids should listen and show respect for the coach.
• The kids need to be told that the Head Coach is boss.  Explain to them the dictator mentality that he or she will probably have.  They should not be constantly questioning the coach.  He or she is the head coach, so what they say, goes.  Make it a real simple, black and white concept for them.
• Treat the coach like they would treat a teacher in school.   Like a teacher in school the coach is trying to create a learning environment that will help youngsters improve their skills.  Like the teacher, the coach is helping the child get better.

 

Invariably, some parents have ‘issues’ with the coaches.  I won’t go into the multitude of factors that may go into these ‘issues’ but I do have recommendations on how they should be discussed.  Meetings with a coach should be:

• One on one
• In private
• With no kids around

Don’t embarrass your child by confronting a coach in public.  And don’t belittle a coach in front of a child.

 

Obviously, youth coaches are not perfect citizens.  There will be times when a coach’s behavior will be atrocious.  That’s when you have to explain to your child that:

• Coaches are not perfect
• Coaches can let their emotions get to them
• If they are belittled by a coach, that’s wrong—but sometimes life can be difficult and you’ll be hurt by someone’s words
• You should give the coach another chance

Of course, you also have the option to speak with the coach privately.

 

If your child doesn’t like the coach, you’ll have to explain to him or her that it’s just like in school—they won’t like every teacher but they still have to act right in the classroom and give it their best effort. 

 

As young athletes get older and enter the world of competitive scholastic sports, parents need to realize that the competitive situation will be much more serious and coaches will have higher expectations for their children.  Coaches will expect more intensity.  Coaches will give more feedback to the child—both positive and negative.  Kids will be critiqued more thoroughly and probably harsher than before.  (After all, playing scholastic sports is like an Honors Class.)  Kids will be pushed by the coach to do more.  Parents need to set these expectation for their youngsters. 

 

Children may be dealing with significant coaching criticism for the first time.  Parents need to tell the children that if the coach is getting on them, that means the coach feels he or she has ability.   That’s why they were picked.  Parents also need to caution their children to expect bigger mood swings from coaches based on team success or failure. 

 

The biggest issue that comes up in interscholastic athletics is playing time.  This is when conflict is most likely to arise between parent and coach.  The best strategy for both parents and their children to follow if they are not satisfied with their playing time, is to  go directly to the head coach and ask him what the youngster needs to improve to earn more playing time.   Then the child has to be motivated to work on this improvement.  When the improvement has been measureable, go back to the coach and hold him or her accountable to what they said before.  The coach told the child what to improve; the child has made that improvement; now the coach should at least give the child an opportunity to earn more playing time.   It is preferable that the youngster be the primary contact with the coach during this process, not the parents. 

 

Parents need to realize that they need to become less and less involved with the coach as their child gets older.  Involvement is certain preferable at the booster club level, but that involvement should not extend to issues of coaching strategy or playing time.  Coaches need autonomy and flexibility to run their programs as they see fit, as long is it falls within the school’s guidelines.

 

Visit www.crons.com.

 

Dealing With Success and Failure

Come Ready or Never Start

Dealing with Success and Failure

 

One of the most valuable lessons that youngsters can learn through participation in organized team sports is how to deal with success and failure.  The Come Ready or Never Start philosophy promotes ways of dealing with both success and failure in athletics that makes these occasions more learning experiences than an evaluation or critique of a child’s skill or value to his or her team.

 

There are two components to success and failure—the team component and the individual component.  As kids start their sports participation in their younger years, parents need to be looking for small individual and team successes that don’t relate to the outcome of a competition–making sure they offer praise.  These may include:

• Showing up on time for games and practice
• Being positive
• Being properly dressed
• Playing and practicing hard
• Doing what the coach tells them to
• Improving
• Playing together as a team
• Hustling as a team

 

Parents need to sit down with their children and explain what success and failure is at this point in their sport participation.  Failure at this age is:

• Lack of effort
• Not behaving during practice
• Not giving their best
• Having a negative attitude.

Their team could win but it wouldn’t be considered a successful outcome if it involves teammates arguing, a lack of effort or poor sportsmanship.

 

Success at this age revolves around trying to get better, both as an individual and as a team.  Sometimes the scoreboard shows it.  Sometimes it does not.  Parents need to sit down with their child and show that each game can be a learning opportunity.  If they won, talk to your child about why they won.  If they lost, talk to your child about why they lost.  (As an aside, when I see a child crying after a lost, it’s a message to me that parents have not taken the time to explain to their children how to keep sports in perspective.  No team or individual failure at this age is important enough to cry about.)

 

As children get older and enter the world of interscholastic athletics, success and failure can be judged by many of the factors just mentioned along with some additional ones.  Sportsmanship needs to be emphasized.  There is a proper way to win and a proper way to lose.   They should be taught to do both with class and respect for their opponents.  They need to be told they can take positive things away from a loss if they played hard, played together and showed improvement.  (A team can lose 20 games in a row, but if the team is getting better that will change.)  And, of course, a primary emphasis is placed on never, never giving up.  Failure is quitting.  Success is never, never quitting.    Other ‘failures’ at this age include:

·        Kids pointing figures at each other

·        Kids blaming others for a loss

·        Kids criticizing other players

·        Kids criticizing their coaches

Parents need to deal with these ‘failures,’ emphasizing that winning and losing is a team thing and any criticism should be directed at the entire team instead of individual players. 

 

As young athletes progress to the high school level, the emphasis on winning and losing as defining success and failure increases dramatically.  The competition is more serious and competitive.  They are playing before crowds where their success or failure is magnified.  People are wrapped up in their successes or failures.  It is important to emphasize that the child can learn from both winning and losing (And you can actually learn more from losing than winning.)

 

If the team wins, talk to your child about the reasons why:

• Did they have a good week of practice?  What did they do in practice that helped?
• How did their focus help them?
• What did they have to overcome?
• How did teamwork help secure the victory?
• What do they still need to work on to get better?

 

If the team loses, talk to your child about:

• What didn’t work?  What worked?
• What has to be changed going forward?
• How was their preparation and practice?
• What could the child have done better?

 Kids on teams experience success in different ways depending on their roles on the team.  Parents have to realize this and reinforce how their children can experience these successes.

• Role:  Just glad to be on the team;  benchwarmer; doesn’t play unless game is out of reach

Successes for them:  cheering on the team and offering encouragement to starters; playing hard and helping team prepare during practice (practices are their ‘games’); helping to keep team attitude positive

• Role:  Primary sub; part-time player

Successes for them:  getting in the game, doing the small things correctly while in the game; making small game contributions; contributing in practice to make the starters better

• Role:  Starter

Successes for them:  helping team win, individual stats, contributing to team performance

 Parents at this level do need to be proactive in talking with their kids—especially if they  are starters—to reinforce that success or failure in sports is not life or death and should be put in the proper perspective.

 

Visit www.crons.com.