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
