Leadership in High School Sports
September 17, 2017
Sports can be a big part of someone’s life and legacy. Sports are played everywhere around the world. They are celebrated in many countries. American football is huge in the U.S., Canada adores hockey, Latin America and many European countries look forward to weekend football with the family, and so on. Sports were a big part of my life, and the leadership I viewed from my authority figures and my coaches influenced the way I implemented leadership on my teams.
Leadership in High School Sports
In my high school, sports were a really big deal. Almost every kid played at least one sport. With that being said, I went to a really small school but it got everyone involved at the time! I started playing varsity soccer as a sophomore, varsity basketball as a junior, and varsity volleyball as a senior. You could say my evenings after school were pretty busy. I had practice every day after school during my senior year until about May. Starting soccer as a sophomore, you are somewhat at the bottom of the food chain. Gradually as you get older and more mature, you hopefully become the captain of the team during your senior year. Being captain is a position that encompasses many different responsibilities. It is not a one man show. Captain means that your character carries the reputation of the team. It is knowing that the actions of the group reflect your leadership and that you influence the group in many ways.
In many professional sports, we see the hype man of the team, the man everyone is watching out for. For example, Tom Brady of the New England Patriots is viewed as a fantastic football player. Everyone thinks of him when they think of the Patriots. All eyes are on him even though there are many players on the team. The first thing I think of when I think of Tom Brady now is the Deflategate Scandal where Brady was accused of using under-inflated balls during the 2014-2015 playoffs against the Indianapolis Colts. Now the Patriots are stuck with that reputation despite the outcome of the case. The team during my junior year was led by many strong players. We were the biggest competition! Each captain contributed something to the group and we were all willing to listen. They helped clean after practice, showed us the drills for each practice, and encouraged all of us when we were down. That year was the strongest team I encountered. It was the team in which I felt most motivated to play. My best and I aimed for the same common goal as everyone, literally and figuratively.
Senior year was a tough year for us. My best friend and I became the new leaders of the team. We lost a lot of great players that year, but we were willing to work hard. We led a very young team that was very new to soccer. The members were all new to the sport of soccer and it reflected in practice. We knew what we needed to work on. We progressed slowly but surely throughout the season. We took some wins home but we also took some great losses too. Some games, we were completely outplayed and there was nothing to be done about it except raise our heads up, shake the other team’s hand, and work harder. We got to the finals of our state competition, which is really no unusual feat because there are only a couple schools that play in our division of Christian school athletics. We were up against the toughest school in the league and we had a game plan to win. We knew their style, who they were putting on the field, what they were going to do, and how they were going to do it. We knew all of this. Some of us played our hearts out! The game was coming to a close and the score was six to two. We raised our heads, shook hands, and made the decision to work harder. Working harder did not mean showing up to practice the next day because the season was over, but working harder meant learning from the loss and why it happened. We were awarded with the second-place trophy, still held ourselves together, and walked with as much pride as we could off the field. The strangest thing about that whole day was that I did not cry after we lost. I thought I would have. I was so worried about losing to them all season long. Instead of worrying, we should have decided what our intentions were from the beginning. This is what caused the mixed emotions and goals throughout the season.
Servant leadership is one thing I learned about a lot during my senior year. I went to a Christian school where servant leadership is taught through a biblical lens because Jesus was a prime example of servant leadership. He showed leadership by taking care of others. He put others above Himself. In this course, we have discussed leadership in the book The Leader’s Companion. Wren (1995) addresses the story of Leo in Hermann Hesse’s Journey to the East. He is the character who provides endless entertainment to the travelers along their journey. When Leo disappears, the men fall into despair and they forego the journey (p. 18). The correlation between our team shifting to new leadership and the men on the journey losing Leo portrays the importance of strong leadership despite the fact that the leadership was under the disguise of servanthood. My high school team was not a team filled with people who claimed to be the boss but actually did nothing to help, but it was a team full of servants who fulfilled the needs of everyone just as much as Leo did for the men on their journey.
In the reading of Snook, he discussed the “be, know, do” aspect of leadership. In sports, many players have the aspects of knowing and doing down, but many lack the being part. The being always comes with character. The character of our team was clearly not the same. Our soccer team lacked the desire to have a unified character, the desire that drives us all to be a team and to work together. Snook (2004) mentions that “each alarming breakdown raises the question of failed leadership.” (p. 16) When we lost that final game, there was a question of whether we, along with our coach, had failed to lead the team well. We were unsure of what we wanted and how we were going to get it. The stakes were not high because there were no stakes to begin with. Some of us wanted to win the state championship but the rest of the team was in it for the fun. We were never on the same page at any given point. It was a recipe for disaster and that, it was.
The lessons I learned from this were not evident in the moment, but they came to fruition as time progressed. I realized the lack of motivation from the rest of the team dragged me down. Even during my very last game as a high school senior, some of my teammates still did not give 100%. I think that may have been the most disappointing part of the whole season. Even when it came down the wire, no one could fully commit themselves to the cause. You have to serve, you have to inspire, you have to challenge and you have to be determined. If you lack determination, a common goal, and a mind of servanthood, you will fail to bring your team together in the good and bad times.
References
Snook, S. (2004). Be, know do: Forming character the West Point way. Compass: A Journal of Leadership, 1 (2), 16 – 19.
Wren, J.T. (1995). The Leaders companion: insights on leadership through the ages. New York: Free Press.