Teams Identity

 

Is your team that team that everybody loves to hate, like the pitbull? They are the team that is tough to beat and they know it, and other teams love the challenge of trying to beat them.  Or is your team that team that is so easy everyone wants to playbecause they know will roll right over you.

What makes a team identity?  It is many factors, the main one is how the team as a whole sees it self.  If the Team sees it self as a very good team and they are not going to lose to anyone, more often than not they will.  Then if they have the attitude that they are not a very good team and they will be luck to win any games at all, they usually end up with a pretty bad season.  A lot of it has to do with the coaching I feel, the coach must let the players know what they expect out of each player and out of the team as a whole to get the best outcome.  The coach should find out from the players, as well, as to what they want out of the season and let them know that they will help them to get to their goals.

Many teams it just takes a lot of hard work.  Take last years Women's College Basketball Championship, now usually in a final game you expect to see one of 4 teams (UConn, Baylor, Stanford, or Tennessee).  These four teams are considered the Power Houses of the women's game, not just because they win almost all their games (except the ones they play against each other), but because they believe they are the best and their coaches believe they are the best.  But this last season none of those teams made it to the Championship game, Texas A&M and Notre Dame did.  These two teams are both great teams, and they work very hard to accomplish what they did.  They were the "underdogs" of the championship series.  Texas A&M had to beat Baylor who was number 1 at the time, and had (still has) one of the best post players ever (Britney Griner), but the fact that this was the 3rd time playing them helped, they knew what to expect and could plan for it.  They came into the game knowing that they were going to win this game no matter what it took. And they did, and went on to win Championship as well. 

In the end your team will be whatever you want it to be.  If you work hard to become what you want, and believe that you are the kind of team that everyone wants to beat, then you will be it.

Behind the Scenes

Athletic trainers, team managers, strength and conditioning coaches, and sport psychologist.
What do these all have in common? They are all apart of almost any sporting team now days, but they really do not get recognized as much as they should.  All play an important asset to the team and usually go unnoticed at time.

My self being an athletic trainer can spend just as much time, probably even more time, as the athletes and coaches do in the athletic training room and at practices.  Usually mornings consist of athletes coming in for rehab, doing treatment with an athlete that has been injured and is getting better or treatment to prevent an injury.  The afternoons an hour before practices or games is utilized to get the athletes prepared for the game or practice.

Team managers and strength and conditioning coaches also spend a lot of time dedicated to the team they are helping out.  Strength and conditioning coaches spend time getting the athletes fast, stronger, and more powerful so that they are the best athletes they can be.  Team managers do things behind the scene that the coaches may ask them to do, the dirty work (laundry or film).

When traveling with teams that is when you feel you are really apart of the team.  You travel with the team and you have team bonding, whether it is on the bus, going out to eat, or just hanging out where ever you go it is a great time to get to know the athlete and they you.  They accept you and they acknowlegde that you are apart of their team.  Then if for some reason you can not be there they notice and are not as happy when you are not there.  It is a great feeling to know that you do mean something to them and feel a special bond with them.

As an athletic trainer I was very happy to get recognized at senior night for the team I work with.  It shows that you may not think you are being recognized, but they do and they appreciate all that they you do for them. 

So the next time you see your athletic trainer or team manager tell them thank you.  You may not think it means that much but sometimes it does.

Team Bonding vs. Hazing

A big concern in athletic today is the topic of hazing.  Teams like to get to know each other by hanging out with each other with out coaches or other adult supervision.  This is great for the team because you get to see your teammates outside of the court and get to know them on a more personal level.  Sometimes, though, it can get out of control if some of the upperclassmen want the underclassmen to do something to be "initiated" as a teammember.  Now there can be some things that are alright, like on the volleyball team I work with, before a game if a good dancing song comes (ie. Party Rock Anthem) they all get in a circle and everyone dances, not just the newbies, each member gets about 10 seconds then it is on to the next.  It is when they do physical or emotional harm to the new members is when it gets out of control. 
According to the article by Robert Brooks, hazing seems to be on the rise although it is not a new practice.  Usually when we think of hazing we think of sports or Greek life but it can be seen in other groups as well, and there is a wide variety of different things that are done, the following article has a great chart of all of this Hazing.  Many athletes do not realize that the things that their other teammates make them do is hazing.  Brooks talks about the study done by Norman Pollard about hazing in colleges and found that only 12% of college students said they had been hazed, yet 80% said they were forced to do dangerous or humiliating things.  Some students just say that it is something that everyone did to be apart of the team and did not think that it was harmful at the time.  A lot of students think that if they do these things that they will be more accepted into the team when they more than likely already are.  They are better ways of being accepted then to fall into the trap of doing something that can in the long run hurt themselves or others.
The hardest part of all of this is to get the students to recognize that it is hazing and to seek out help when it is needed.  And the best way to stop hazing is to prevent it, http://www.hazingprevention.org/ is a great cite that talks about a lot of different issues and ways to prevent hazing from happening.

References
Brooks, Robert.  Hazing:Rituals of Bonding or Humiliation.  http://www.drrobertbrooks.com/writings/articles/0404.html

Communication

Communication is key for any team.  Usually when we think of communication we think of verbally speaking to one another, but it can also be non-verbal (body language, facial expressions, etc.).  Communication, whether it be verbal or non-verbal, must be well understood in a team.  The team must communicate efficently for them to work properly, and must be able to work as a whole along with one another.
Coaches especially need to be able to communicate with their teams.  A great example is Coach Pat Summit, Head Coach for Tennessees Women's Basketball Team, she tells her players exactly what she wants done and expects her players to do exactly that.  If they don't she lest them know either verbally or with her dreaded stare. All of it must work because she has won the NCAA National Championship eight times, and its hard to imagine a National Championship without  Tennessee being somewhere close.

Communication in a team can influence everything from the interactions of team members to the outcomes of team goals(Christine Switzer).  Mean that as long as everyone is on the same page and talking about what they expect from the team they should achieve their goals.  With no communication the team maybe literally running into each other not knowing where people will be on the court or field.

So for the best outcome for teams communication is key, talking things out and letting your teammates and coaches know what you are doing and why will be best for the team as a whole.

Christine Switzer.  The Importance of Communication in a Team. Livestrong.com.  2010. http://www.livestrong.com/article/146354-the-importance-of-communication-in-a-team/#ixzz1dmwVCD3E

Ivey's Corner with Coach McGraw

This video is just an interview with Coach Muffit McGraw, Head Women's Baskeball Coach at Notre Dame. I liked this video because she talks about how her returns will be benificial to the team, along with what her incoming freshmen can contribute. Coach McGraw knows what she has and can trust her girls to provide everything they have to have a good team for the upcoming season.
It is important for a coach to realize that everyone on the team has their own position on the team. It is good for them to recogize which players will be good in certain places and they must respect them in their own way. Because the coach is the overall leader of the team and if they do not really know what they want their players to be doing then the athletes will not. She also mentions in the begining that she has faith in her returning players to help guide her freshmen, which is good in a team. The freshmen need someone or a group to help mentor them so that they get the hang of things.

Steping Up

http://twentytwowords.com/2011/10/24/a-dogs-seeing-eye-dog/

Sometimes teamwork can come at different times, and places.  We can be thrown into different situations and certain people need to step up in certain times and that is when they shine.  This link is of two dog thrown together one to help the other.  They have been together for 5 years, and one is the seeing eye of the other.  The seeing eye dog is being a leader and has stepped up to help out the other.
Just like on a team, if other players are struggling it is up to the other players to step up and help out.  Even if we are not sure what exactly to do we can always help out and try to provide assistance as best as possible.

Working Together

"The team is only as strong as our weakest player!"

How many times have we heard this from our coaches? Thousands of times, but what does it mean?

It means that if there is one weak person on the team they could bring down the rest of the team.  If one player fails then the whole team fails.  Teams must be able to work together as a whole, and if someone is weak or struggling in some aspect, the rest of the team must be able to help them out either by showing them the correct way to do something or they do it themselves.

All teams must be able to work towards the same goal, as well.  The team should agree, at the begining of the season, what they hope to accomplish by the end of the season and how they would like to achieve those goals.  When eveyone is on the same page as one another it makes achieving those goals a lot easier.  Just like the picture above, one biker is not working towards the end goal and so the other bikers are having to work harder to get to the end.  The one guy is being lazy and letting the other guys do all the work, when if he would just help out they would get wherever they were going a little fast and they could relax more when they get there instead of now when it may be important.

If there is just one person on the team that thinks that they are better than everyone else or that they do not need to work as hard as the other players on the team they could bring down the other team members.  The other players may think that they are not as good as that player and may not try as hard, and so the whole team is affected by that one person.  The following link talks about those players that think that they are better and not really a "team player"One Bad Apple

Team Leaders

http://rise.espn.go.com/all-sports-girls/articles/2011/05/02-cc-kaitlen-goddard.aspx

This article talks about the importance of the team captain and how they handle situations.  In the text it talks about how there are certain situations that as the team captain they can handle as a team, and at other times the captain needs to bring in a coach.  According to Jeff Janssen, the team captain needs to be a connector, they need to bring together the team as a whole to get to their final goal.  If the team is not connected by something or someone there will be a lot of chaos and discommunication, and nothing will be done correctly.

The article talks about how at times the captain will try to solve problems with in the team that are not to serious, but once they get to where it is affecting the whole team and she cannot solve it herself she gets a coach involved.  It is good to know that she knows her limits as a captain, and when to involve her coach.  The coach should be involved in knowing what is going on with their team.  If the team is doing poorly because of an argument or personality clashes within the team, they should be notified so that they can help solve the problem.


Refrences
Janssen, Jeff. "Captains Must Be Connectors." TeamCaptainsNetwork.com. Janssen Sports Leadership Center. Web. 02 Oct. 2011. <http://www.teamcaptainsnetwork.com/public/279.cfm>.

Team Chemistry

http://youtu.be/ZEIoNu4XOYY

This video talks to a couple of volleyball players and the coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols Volleyball team and how they believe that their team chemistry is.
One thing that they talk about is how the team bonded over the summer by playing on summer teams and just getting to know one another over that time.  They would spend a lot of time over the summer together on and off the court which helped out a lot with their team chemistry as well.  When you get to know people off the court it is easier to get along with them when you are on the court because you have a bonding expirence with them.
Another concept that the coach brought up was the teams identity.  Every team wants to be recgonized as a certain type of team, hopefully not to be recgonized as a disorganized team.  The coach talked about how it took some time for everyone to get along or get used to everyone else, but eventually the players knew one another and could count on each other to work as a team.
The last thing that is important to team chemistry is that team bonding experiences.  The last players talks about going on the road and being able to bond with the team.  Team road trips are always the best part of any season because that is when you get to really know your team mates.  When you are on the court you are all equals and should be obeying what coach tells you, but of the court that is when you can be your true self and get to know the real side of people.

Team Roles

According to Mark Eys et. al. there are two types of roles with in a team: formal and informal.  Formal roles are those set by the group, leader examples would be coach, manager, and team capatin, and performance examples would be setter/spiker in volleyball or guard/post in basketball (Eys et. al., 2010, p137).   These roles must be set by the team and the people in these roles must know what is expected of them.  For the leaders they must be willing to be in that leader position and know that everyone will be looking up to them for assistance and they must know how to handle different situations.  For example the team capatian is usually picked by a combination of what the coaches and players think a leader should be.  Those people will usually be the ones that represent the team and what it stands for on and off the floor.  It may be a lot of pressure for some people and so that may not be their role on the team, but other they are willing to be in that position because it is what they are used to doing and are happy to represent their teammates.
The informal roles are those that people evolve into as a result of their interactions among the team (Eys et. al., 2010, p. 137).  Informal roles include the non-vocal/lead by example leader, the task booster/spark plug/ cataylst, social convener, team player, and comedian (Eys et. al., 2010, p137).  These players usually have different personalities according to their different roles, like the non-vocal leader will probably be the one that is there 30 minutes before practice and 30 minutes after or the comedian who no one can be mad at because they are always joking around.  Different personality types will lead people into their different roles, whether they realize it or not.  Usually those people have different situations that they are best suited for as well, like the cataylst is usually put in when the team needs a little bit of a boost.

So overall the different roles for people can either be elected for them or just be in it because of their personalities.  These roles are best used for different situations during games or practices, or even outside of the sports they are playing.  The players and coach must be able to recgonize what their roles are and be able to utilize them effectively so that they benefit the team as a whole.




References
Eys, Mark A., Burke, Shauna M, Albert, Carron V., Dennis, Paul W. (2010). The Sport Team as an Effective Group.  Applied Sport Psychology, 6, 137.