Building a Winning Team Culture

Strategies for fostering teamwork, discipline, and a positive environment among players

Building a winning culture in high school football can be difficult de­pending on the situation. In 2016, during my first year of coaching, I was tasked with a particularly difficult challenge that, at the time, I was not ready for – but I’m eternally grateful for looking back. My role was not only to help on the varsity team but also to help with the C-Team. For those of you who don’t know what ­a C-Team is, it is a team filled with kids that frankly aren’t good enough to play on JV and the overflow of the freshman team. Essentially, this is a team of kids that would never play otherwise. They require their own schedule to be able to get meaningful playing time and it takes a lot of work to make sure that we get the necessary preparations in order. With 3 other entire teams to pay attention to, the rest of the staff couldn’t dedicate the time and effort to make sure every player on the C-Team was being coached or ‘fulfilled’.

Enter Andrew Doyle. My primary role, fittingly enough, was to keep the energy sky-high, to keep these kids engaged the entire season, and to develop them the best that I could so that they come back next year. At the time, our football turnout was 140-150 kids, so every single team had a full roster. It was a lot of work, but it could not have been more of a perfect role for me just getting into the coaching scene. Unluckily for me, I did not have any other coaches to help me out – they were all busy with the varsity, JV, and freshman teams, developing the talent that they had on those squads. Fast forward to the end of the season, and it didn’t go exactly to plan, but it went so much better than anyone had ever imagined it would. From day 1, me and the players kind of bonded over one thing – we all had something to prove. They wanted to prove that they were good enough to compete with the big dogs and I wanted to prove to myself and everyone else that this is something that I can do. Out of a 6-game schedule, we won 3 games. More importantly, we had 100% retention from the C-Team going into 2017. Most importantly, I am able to say that because of the presence we had as a team and what we were able to do, several of my inaugural C-Team players actually got scholarships to play at the next level and often times when I speak to them to this day – they still reflect fondly on that year as the year that either kept them interested in football or catalyzed their interest in the sport. As a coach, that’s the stuff that keeps you going. That’s what keeps you grinding to be better every single day, every single season.

I think about that year quite often when I’m venturing into a new chapter in my life. I think about what it took from me to be able to do that as effectively as I did and I believe that not only was it the fact that we had that goal in common, but we were playing for each other as well. Everyone wanted to see everyone succeed and ball out and that led to us being a truly united team, no matter how far out of our depth we were. We were a gang of misfit toys going up against other schools’ JV teams and taking them to the wire if not winning. In one instance, for example, our varsity team had just taken a local school to the woodshed. The very next day, our C-Team plays their JV team. We played this schools freshman earlier in the year and beat them pretty easily (One of the victories I’m most proud of, but that’s a story for another day) and now it was their JV’s turn to get a little revenge for their freshman and varsity. We get out there on the sidelines and get warmed up, and we see the team they’re fielding. They had dressed down several varsity lineman to go up against us to ensure the win. It looked like they were playing full grown men against our freshman in high school. It was clearly unfair, but our team was unimpressed and went out there and competed their hearts out anyway. The game ended up going into overtime and we did end up losing, but the resilience of the team was something that makes a coach proud of what he does. A couple strategies that I utilized during 2016 to build this culture were as follows:

1. First and foremost, you MUST bring the energy.
2. • The kids match you in everything you do. If you’re an angry coach, they’re going to yell at each other for mistakes and eventually shut down and lose their passion for the game. If you are a calm coach, they will work through disagreements and mistakes in a calmer fashion. This is a fact. You have to establish the kind of coach you want to be and the team culture you want to be on day 1.
   • Me bringing the energy and setting the tone day in and day out let the kids know that we’re here to get better and we’re here to have fun, which was the most important thing to everyone involved, including the players and parents.
3. When someone makes a mistake, DO NOT sweat them for it. Mistakes happen. For me, it was about understanding their mindset behind why they thought they did the right thing, and then coaching them on it. In my opinion, coaching a kid fully means that you understand their mindset on things and then come to a middle ground on what they’re doing and what you’re expecting them to do. Yelling and screaming at them when they make a small mistake is not going to get them better, it’s going to get them stressed. I always told the kids, “If you mess up, I want you to mess up at 100MPH because I know that you fully believe in what you’re doing and I can work with that. I don’t want you to be indecisive on what you need to do to make this play.”
4. Be flexible in your approach with kids. Coaching is not a one-size-fits-all kind of deal. Every single kid has a unique level of coachability and a certain way they want you to coach them and being the person in charge, you HAVE to be cognizant of this fact. It’s not going to be easy to get to know these kids and their quirks, but if you want a winning culture and to foster a positive environment, it’s worth investing the time in getting to know that much about your athletes.
5. When you do team activities, break up the group in different ways. This will allow everyone to get to know everyone and it will allow them to work together with different teammates and get them used to that sort of situation. In team sports, trust is the most valuable thing your team can have in one another. If your athletes don’t trust one another to do their job, then it’s pointless to even field the team. Your offensive line needs to work as a unit, your receiving core has to work as a unit, your entire defense has to work as a unit and so on. Building trust through different team activities can be a fun, energetic way to shake up the camaraderie amongst teammates.
6. My most important piece of advice that I always always ALWAYS tell the athletes. LEAD. BY. EXAMPLE.
As soon as you sign up to be an athlete at any organization, you start living your life in a fishbowl. Everyone sees how the star football players act. From freshman to administration, everyone’s eyes are on you. Same with coaches, maybe even more so because the expectations are higher for you. a. Quick aside, I had a very uncomfortable meeting with my team in the pouring down rain after practice one day because I heard a RUMOR that one of my athletes was bullying someone within the school. I told the entire team that if I found out that anyone was being bullied by one of my athletes, their football career would end the same day. If you want your team to do the right thing, you have to lead by example. You can’t say one thing and directly contradict yourself by doing the opposite. It is truly a lifestyle. You won’t reach everyone with this tactic, but those players who are steadfast in doing the wrong thing will eventually weed themselves out.
7. My final piece of advice is kind of reiterating a sentiment I mentioned earlier, but Make it Fun! For example, every day before practice – as the kids were trickling out of the locker room – I’d take that opportunity to talk to a new kid about school, their hobbies, their family life, etc and then after that I’d line up opposite them for a little fun. Line up as an OL if I was talking to a DL or line up as a receiver if I was talking to my DBs. Just shake it up – everyone wants a shot at winning a rep against Coach. On the final practice of the year, I suited up in full gear and practiced with them. Let them take their shots at me and made the last practice nothing but fun while getting good work in. To this day, whenever I talk to some of those athletes – they still mention that one practice and how much fun they had on that day.