This is a letter I wrote at the end of my senior year of college to my college coach. I’ve never shared it with anyone until now.
The lesson for any coach reading this is that you can cause massive resentment, massive headache, and massive heartache when you do your job incorrectly and for the wrong reasons.
The reason I talk about user experience so much is because mine was so poor.
I hope this makes you think, rethink and change if you have to…
Anyway, here’s the letter:
To the Coach that gave me my why,
Why are you doing this? Why do you want to coach? Why are you so passionate about coaching Drew? Why do you read so much about this, don't you feel like you are wasting your time?
When I start talking about coaching something changes in me, people notice it all the time when we get on the topic of coaching or leadership or anything of that nature. It's like something comes over me. People notice it right away and when I'm done with my first few thoughts they immediately ask me why I care so much about coaching, and why I think leadership in all aspects of our society not just sports coaching needs to change. It's because my purpose was cemented during my college experience, I went through a battle I could not win and it took me to a very dark place(we will get there) but on the other side of that experience, I made a promise to myself that I would not allow any of my players, clients or anyone I come into contact with feel what it's like to go through what I did.
I knew in junior hockey I wanted to coach hockey professionally someday, I have a passion for the game that will not die and I love being at the rink. But that reason was so surface level at the time. I wasn't going to change any lives because of passion. I had a few great coaches through my junior hockey experience that taught me things that I will take with me and teach my players.
However, the person I learned the most from happened to be my worst coach. Situational mentorship is a term that basically means sometimes we are put in situations good or bad, that we learn from a mentor, again this person can be good or bad in terms of their example. The situation and the person were both bad in this case but I learned a lot and he solidified why I want to be known as a great coach when it's all said and done.
I love high performance and everything that goes into it, the combination of tactical training on your skills, physical training in the weight room, and the psychological training of the mind all in concert with each other to produce athletes that can do amazing things when it matters. I read everyday in college and continue to read on everything related to these fields so I have read what good coaching should look like. I also experienced good coaching in juniors and on some of my youth teams, but when you know what it should look like and get the opposite, you know you are in trouble and you can't do much about it.
You aren't supposed to be just a number on a roster, you are a human being and a college student at that with issues everyday from getting your homework done, studying for tests, reading so you don't get behind on material, going to the gym to train, going to practice, personal life issues, relationships, the list goes on for days.
Was I treated like a human being? No, my coach would walk past me in the hallway as I got to the rink and bury his head until he passed me.
You aren't supposed to be so results driven that you lose sight of any chance to teach life lessons, you are supposed to talk about values and create a culture where your players feel safe to be who they are at all times without fear of judgement. We had goals that consisted of winning conference and the national championship every year and that is all we talked about. What is is gonna take to get there? We didn't know, the process didn't matter and we were just supposed to work like robots until we did it. Talk about unfulfilled by seasons end.
You aren't supposed to run a dictatorship in such a way where when someone has an idea you immediately see it as a challenge and then get defensive towards players. Asking everyone that even has a small suggestion:
"do you feel like you could do a better job?”
“Are you challenging my ability as a coach?"
Well lets just say it's not healthy and you might have some dark personality trait issues that need to be looked at. You should have been inspiring us to become the best version of ourselves and realize that we are college hockey players and we aren't 6 year old kids, we can put some serious and rational ideas together in our brain to improve the team. Great leaders create more leaders, and allow them to lead... They don't bark orders.
You aren't supposed to make it about you, Rule 1 in coaching states, " it's not about you." Like seriously ever, it's never about you, even if you win the championship.
John Tillman, the Maryland lacrosse coach, his team just recently won the national championship and upon his captains getting the trophy from the NCAA commissioners, ran over to coach Tillman and handed him the trophy while he was being interviewed by ESPN and the mic was on and he said, "guys that is your trophy, you won that trophy." and handed it right back to his guys, and he said, " it's about them." That's a coach. We won the league this year and I sat in the stands scratched and watched the most awkward and telling series of events unfold….
Our guys didn't know if they were allowed to be happy that we won, they didn't feel safe to express themselves like a bunch of 20 year old kids should have. They didn't cheer or even smile, it was disgusting and that was the environment you created everyday for us, we didn't feel cared for as humans, you didn't know us as humans and you didn't want to know us as humans.
You're my why, you're why I care so much about coaching, and you’re the reason why people ask me what changes in a conversation because out of nowhere when the topic is leadership or coaching I get a fire in my eyes. You're the reason I will never treat my players like you treated us, I've lived it, I've felt the emptiness and it won't happen on my watch. That is the only thing I can ever thank you for.
I inspire people to become the best version of themselves by building relationships and adding value.
That’s my coaching philosophy moving forward, clearly defined in under 30 words. All the great coaches are relationship coaches believe it or not and I’ve studied a lot of them. John Wooden never spoke of the words “winning” or “win” he built a culture through deep relationships and the rest took care of itself. Bill Walsh was the same way, the results take care of themselves when you have a culture that is rich with compassion and empathy. And the weird thing is, if you care about your players, they will actually start playing to win for you.