Fairness or Winning? Definitions of Success can Vary

I was going to entitle this piece "Fairness or Success..." but I had to stop myself. Winning is one thing, but success can be many things and is not strictly defined as a particularly large gulf between wins and losses. Coaches at all levels struggle to define what the meaning of success is for them and their program. For instance, how would Mike Krzyzewski define "success" for his Duke basketball program? Is it 26 NCAA Tournament berths in 27 seasons? 12 ACC Championships? 11 Final Fours? Four NCAA National Championships? Or maybe it is the 92% graduation rate for his players - you know, the fact that he has had only two players in his 27 years at Duke stay for four years and not graduate? So, excellence, at least at the amateur level, can be defined in many ways.

How about excellence in the youth sports arena? The genteel thing to say when we first become involved is that it's all about experience and having fun for the kids, but after 10 years of coaching my own kids I feel qualified to say that I wish it were that simple! I have spent the last 6 months or so living out an unscientific experiment in that regard with my local travel soccer program.

I coach an "A" travel soccer team for local 12-year olds. We are far from "elite", although we do have some terrific athletes on the team who can hold their own with most kids. This past weekend, we kicked off our spring season by winning a five team tournament. Along the way, we were able to get past two very good teams from our division who we had not been able to beat lately.  We started the tournament with two solid victories, taking care of business by winning the games that we should indeed win. So, we are half way there, and the stakes get a little higher with the chance to face two teams that had "owned" us and exact a measure of revenge. Let's pause there...


Many team philosophies can lead to success.

I held a tryout for this team last week, auditioning 7 kids from the age group's "B" team for three spots on my team. While my team was no juggernaut, these kids (and their parents!) had the misfortune of being part of a team that in its most recent season lost all 10 games on its schedule and was outscored by (gulp) 52 goals - 2 goals for and 54 against. One of my coaching friends said he had never seen such a "devastating" line in the soccer program. Needless to say, that would be a very difficult situation in which to define "success", but that's a different column altogether. Anyway, these seven kids were literally aching to get out of such a demoralizing situation. In the end, I took 3 kids, none of whom will be impact players, but they will definitely give us some fresh legs to fill in when necessary. I am a coach who likes to keep his teams fairly lean, with a good amount of playing time for all. I realized that I made a mistake and cut it too close last fall, as injuries and other commitments left our team with one or zero available substitutes on many weekends. I realized I had to rethink that philosophy a bit to ensure that we would be able to get everyone a rest when they needed one.

So, back to the tournament...

The team is 2-0 and about to face the squad that went undefeated and won our division last fall, beating us 6-1 in the process. The three "new guys" played sparingly in the first two games, and now I had two games left to get them some work. Or did I. Good old "Coach Fairness" started to think about other things, like "hey, we have a legitimate shot to win this tournament", and "boy would it feel good to avenge that 6-1 loss from the fall". And then I start to think about what is fair. You see, I was a kid who played sports all my life, and I played on some pretty good teams. I was never the star, and most likely would have been in the category of the three new kids. How did I feel when I was 12? Was it enough to be part of a winner, even if my own contribution was hard to define? What would winning a tournament do for my veteran players who hadn't had much to really hang their hat on lately? And what about fairness to the new guys in another light? Is it fair to put new player and backup goalkeeper Joe into a tight game where he could have the entire tournament in his hands? Was it fair to give Axel a chance to play defense on the back line when I wasn't really comfortable with his ability yet? Or to have Adam play striker when I wasn't certain he would be able to "finish" if given a golden opportunity?

As the great internal debate raged before game 3, I made the decision that trying our damnedest to win this thing was the right approach. Had the boys been younger, I may have decided on a different approach, but in the case, I believe that 12 year old boys and their parents understand competition and generally want to try their hardest to be victorious.

As for the new guys and their parents, I freely admit to leveraging what I viewed as "their situation". I thought to myself:

"They must be so thankful to have been released from that Hell they were consigned to last year, right? When was the last time these kids actually experienced victory? They got plenty of playing time on that team. This is their first time playing with us, so surely a honeymoon period with these parents is in full effect right now and they can't be too upset if their kids don't play too much...right?"

And then I thought about it in the context of what's really fair for all the kids:

"Our goalie is playing really well right now. If I put Joe-the-backup in there just so he can get some time is that fair to anyone? If the first stringer lets one by and we lose, that's ok because they beat our proven guy. If Joe-the-backup gets beat, the kids, the parents, Joe and yes, I, will always second guess that move.  This team could really benefit immeasurably from a win here and I am going to everything within my power to give it our best shot..."

So we went with our best lineup. Happily, the result was positive and we won the tournament coming out on top with two very close games. Yeah, winning felt great. If we lost in the last game playing with our best how would it have felt? Would everyone have felt so great if there had been equal playing time for all and we finished in the middle of the pack? Tough questions.

In these kinds of dilemmas, it is imperative to look at the composition of your team. So, me thinking a lot about the "veteran" kids/parents and leveraging the mindset of the "newbies" is not just a self-serving approach in this case. The core of my team is a group of athletic kids who play multiple sports. They are generally overtaxed and over scheduled and really want to see some sort of a return on the investment of their time. They see the trophies and they know what that hardware means. They know that it is fun to play, but guess what? it's even more fun to be competitive, and it's most fun to win.

So back to the original question, what feels better, fairness or winning? And the answer lies in the makeup of your own team and how you define what is important. I will coach a new U9 team in a tournament this weekend and the message will be drastically different because our definition of "success" will be different. But on this group of 12 year olds, we define success as being a competitive TEAM. The kids are keenly aware that there are differences in skill and ability among them. Sure they want playing time, but they know that the goal of team success will dictate, in most cases, who plays and how much. By sticking to my own guns in that tournament, it also sent a message to the new folks. It let them know right from the start what we are about and helped to set some expectations for them from the outset. Had I balanced the playing time and just used the weekend as a participatory tune-up for the season, I might have been sending a very different message, and the expectations going forward would be different as well. The essential ingredients in all of this are consistency and communication. Once you start to mix your messages or stop communicating effectively things get sticky. It's not to say that you can't manipulate or modify your message, or that the team's definition of success won't change over time, but part of being a good coach is managing that change by communicating.

Mike Krzyzewski has figured out what defines success for his Duke program, and more importantly, his stakeholders have bought into that, which is why he has been Duke's coach for 27 years. Obviously, he must put a premium on something besides just W's, because it ain't easy to maintain that kind of graduation rate. His definition of the successful Duke student-athlete must give some serious weight to the "student" part, no? It's a clear message with 27 years worth of consistency behind it.