Teaching Kids to Compete!
- Coach David Heeb
- Sep 17, 2017
- 5 min read
COMPETITIVE GREATNESS is "the ability to be at your best when your best is needed." That's from Coach John Wooden's Pyramid of Success. I recently heard an interview with Joe Montana, winner of four Super Bowls and arguably the greatest quarterback of all time. Joe never lost in the Super Bowl, and was definitely at his best when it was needed. In this interview he was talking about being competitive. I love listening to those stories and hearing about just how bad some players wanted to win.
I'm an educator. I've been a teacher, coach, and administrator all of my adult life. Over the course of my 18 year career, I've seen how political correctness and social niceties have watered down how we teach kids to compete. It's the "everybody gets a trophy" phenomenon, and I believe that hurts kids. So that's what I want to talk about today.
First of all, I do believe that there is such a thing as unhealthy competition. I know in my own life, my desire to compete has brought out the very best and the very worst in me. It's made me work extremely hard, push though things that I probably wouldn't have if I didn't want to win so bad. It's also made me lose focus of what's really important at times, and it has also caused me to be rude, arrogant, and just not a nice person in general to some people.
The point is, there is such a thing as unhealthy competition.
Having said that, I believe that teaching and actually encouraging healthy competition is one of the most important things we can teach our kids. Because the truth is, life is always going to be about competing. Teaching our kids to try as hard as they can, to really compete, to "be at their best when their best is needed," and how to deal with both winning and losing is the best way we can prepare them for adulthood.
I used to work with a coach named Chris Neff. He was a really good coach, and he had this saying where he called some kids "too cool to care." Coach Neff noticed that some of our kids weren't REALLY competing hard because they were afraid to REALLY try as hard as they could and fail. In their mind, it was better to just say "well yeah, I lost, but I didn't really try." That's one way kids don't compete. They're actually afraid to fail, so to hide this fear, they're "too cool to care."
Another way I've seen kids not compete is to have "ready made excuses." I had a family member (not saying any names) that used to ALWAYS do this, and it drove me crazy. Her kids were decent athletes, but they weren't the best on the team. That's okay, but instead of building her kids up and telling them they tried their best or they would do better next time, she blamed the coach or blamed the referee or blamed the other players on the team.
It was always somebody else's fault. The funny thing is, I ended up coaching her youngest son. So now she couldn't make the same excuses about this kid! We were related. I wasn't picking on her kid. Once those "ready made excuses" were gone, yep you guessed it, that kid that I got to coach ended up being far and away the best (and happiest) player of all her kids.
Another way I've seen kids avoid competition is to compare themselves to other players on their team, other kids in their class, etc. I call this the "well yeah I but I did better than HIM" excuse. My high school coach, Ronnie Cookson, who won 13 state championships, used to always tell us that just because the guy guarding me had a terrible practice, that it didn't make me look good. It just made him look bad.
Like Kacey Musgrave said in her song, "Pouring salt in my sugar won't make yours any sweeter. Peeing in my yard ain't gonna make yours any greener." Coach's point was, "Can't we both do good? And can't we both do bad?" He wanted us to do our best and not compare ourselves to the people around us.
I could go on, but you get the point. Being too cool to care, having those ready made excuses, and settling for "being better than him" instead of "as good as you can be" are all symptoms of the same problem... fear of failure. So the lesson here is, and the question we need to ask is, "how do we teach kids to deal with losing and bounce back?" How do we teach them to try as hard as they can, knowing that it might not be a "win" all the time?
So to answer this, I started doing some research. If you follow Just Win Today, you know I usually use sports as a metaphor for life. I stumbled across some old 80's footage of NBA games. Back during that era, there were fewer teams in the league, meaning (1) teams played each other more times; and (2) there were more good players on each team, the talent wasn't as spread out, etc.
The rivalries were so intense. Fights broke out. Some guys genuinely disliked each other. The most famous rivalry during that era was Lakers vs. Celtics, Bird vs. Magic. But what a lot of people don't realize is that during that same time frame, Philadelphia had AWESOME teams. Since Boston and Philly were both in the Eastern Conference, and they played more often, this rivalry was really intense.
Boston had 4-5 Hall of Fame players on their roster during that run. Philly had 4 Hall of Fame players during that run. The best player from each team, Larry Bird and Dr. J, were both small forwards. So they not only had to play several times a year, but they had to guard each other! These are two of the greatest players EVER, alpha competitors, going at it.
This is a clip of a Converse shoe commercial, followed by a fight between Dr. J and Bird. They got in a fight on the court, and the NEXT DAY they shot this commercial together.
The Celtics beat the Sixers more often than not, but in 1982 the Sixers beat the Celtics to advance to the NBA Finals, where they would meet the LA Lakers. Listen to the Boston crowd, as they chant "BEAT LA." This was a great sign of sportsmanship, kind of like, "you beat us, but we hope you win it all now. So go BEAT LA."
Finally, this is a tribute from the Celtics to Dr. J during his last game in Boston. After nearly a decade of going head to head and battling each other, listen to the respect from both sides.
This rivalry is a great example of two teams and two guys COMPETING HARD AGAINST EACH OTHER! In 1980, Dr. J won. In 1981, Bird won. In 1982, Dr. J won, In 1983, Bird won. To get what they wanted, they had to go through each other. They didn't run from it or hide from it. They didn't ask for a trade. They competed. They brought the absolute best out of each other.
I guess that's my point. When you really, really compete and try as hard as you can, you're going to get better. If you do that today, then you're going to be better than you were yesterday. Today will be a win for you. As simple as it sounds, if you can do that consistently, you'll be amazed at where you end up a week or a month or a year from now.
One day at a time. Just Win Today. Compete. Thanks for reading. #JWT
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