A little help from my friends.

[CGD]

I recommend picking up a book by the Wizard of Westwood (Wooden). He has great insights for any organization. I find a lot of his ideas relevant for business too.

[CGD]

BTW good luck. Please keep us posted!!

[D-ROB 50]

Wow, Big thanks to all of you for the insight, I knew I would learn something here to improve the program. Freshmen and JV by the way, Keep the input comming. We start TOW-A-DAYS august 10th.

[Spursone]

"It's not how long you make it,
It's how you make it long."

The Late George Karlin

[FromWayDowntown]

I'm limited in what I can post right now, but I'll tell you that I think you'll need more than some interesting sayings to get what you hope to get from those kids. What you seem to want is both a compe ive spirit and some enthusiasm for the opportunity to compete. The best way to instill those ideas is to make everything a compe ion (whether an individual compe ion or a team effort) and to use the compe ions themselves as a tool to encourage enthusiasm about having the opportunity to compete. In a football practice, a lively Oklahoma drill is usually a winner, but make it more than a drill by creating incentives to win (make the losers do pushups or a short run) and then encourage enthusism from those who aren't in the drill by creating an overall incentive (team that wins gets a break from some post-practice running or something). Of course, be sure that such things are ok with the head coach, too. But I think getting what you want will take more than some soundbites.

When I was a junior in high school (at an upper-middle class school) our team was terribly uncompe ive and not very emotional. We got our tails kicked for most of that crappy season and our head coach was rumored to be on the chopping block. The offseason that followed was all about compe ion - we had record boards in the weightroom, were ranked against each other based on testing results (with incentives for those who ranked highly), and were frequently divided into teams for races or other compe ions. We were also periodically put through enthusiasm drills (a drill that was 2 minutes or high-fiving teammates, for instance). When we took the field the next fall, we were insanely compe ive, totally unified, and more enthusiastic about the game than anyone we played. We had a great season, too. Couldn't tell you any quote that our coach read to us, either....