Coaches preach it. Players hear it. Press promotes it. Everyone wants it. Few practice it - the team concept.

To many coaches, players and fans, developing a team concept means working out a flashdance routine for pre-game warm-ups. It means high fives, elaborate handshakes, clever cheers, pithy mottoes, catchy signs, dressing up on game day and signing on the bus. But most of these activities are only performances intended to convince someone else (the other team, schoolmates, parents, coaches, media) that your team is a close-knit supportive unit.

Unified team play has nothing to do with the aforementioned cheerleading activities; rather, team play means physical and psychological support of your partner, your teammates, your program. Coaching athletes to give that support requires every bit as much attention to detail as coaching the most complex technical skill. Such attention requires practicing team concepts whenever and wherever the team is together, not simply in pre-game and post-game locker-room talks.

In order for a coach to develop adequate team concept practices, a pre-season plan and program philosophy must be clearly established. This involves setting guidelines for athletes well in advance of problem situations. Coaches would not think of sending their teams out to play without proper technical and strategic preparation; yet many coaches devote little time to cooperative team effort preparation. They talk about it in the vague terms during pre-season pep talks and before big games. But if young athletes are going to fully experience and understand a team concept, they must participate in exercises and practices which make the abstract rhetoric concrete.

Designing and maintaining these tangible practices can be particularly difficult and demanding for new coaches, and for those with a tenuous hold on their position. Yet if coaches can weather the occasional stormy reactions, a strong psychological and emotional team foundation will result and future programs will resist the fluctuations of the physical elements.

Listed below are several practices I have found useful in developing a strong team concept. Some of these are physical actins that players must go through. Other suggestions will seem like only philosophical concepts, but you should note that they too are supported by definite, specific concrete action. By no means do the 10 suggestions represent a complete or packaged team philosophy; rather, they should be considered independently as ideas that might augment an established program or give impetus to a new one.

10 Team Concepts

1. Blue Chips are Dispensable - Consistency is the most important factor in team discipline and policies. And you must start at the top. This means committing yourself to benching blue chips when they violate your behavior standards, even during critical periods, quarters, matches and playoffs. Nothing will destroy team unity faster than a coach's displays of favoritism, no matter how slight or rare the instance. Usually one blue chip benching will convince your players that you are committed to team discipline.
2. Hard Practice equals Playing Time - This should be the sine qua non of an athlete's playing time. Every coach talks about attitude and effort, but how many coaches make out a starting line-up according to those criteria? Tell your players that their ability will be considered only after attitude and effort. Try this for one season, and your program will never have another attitude problem.
3. All Players Share Responsibilities - Stay away from the frosh carry the balls, sweep the court, put up equipment, do - everything mentality. Rotate responsibilities by week. Include all players on responsibility lists, and add that the seniors have the additional responsibility of making certain everything gets done. Do not, however, give seniors authority to command or discipline other players.
4. Rescue - Has a player missed a shot, dropped a pass, blown a serve? Is a player on the floor or in the bleachers? Have players, during practice as well as games, rush to their teammate's rescue. It is much more valuable to have a player run over to a teammate who has dropped a pass and slap hands with them, than it is to do so when the same player has made a score. This hand slapping is not positive reinforcement for errors, but a "come on, let's get it" statement or a "nice try" for exceptional effort. The rescue should not be a "that's OK" approach. Don't encourage your players to lie to one another. The key is to help teammates get out of the past as soon as possible and look to the next moment of play. Successful athletes are those who keep from wallowing in the morass of mistakes; successful teams are those that believe so strongly in one another that they can believe in "next time."
5. Team Greetings - Every team should have some method of greeting players as they come off the floor, court or field. This especially important on substitutions when a player is being pulled for poor play.
6. Not a Grimace - Do not allow players to react negatively to anyone's play (including their own.) There isn't time during a game for personal displays of displeasure. Such acts are a waste of time and physical energy that players can hardly afford to throw away. Teach players to channel that energy toward the future.
7. Rotate Captains - Approach the position of captain not as the team leader, but as another position of responsibility that seniors, or more mature players, must share. Consider that when you have only one or two captains, you are not only limiting a leadership training opportunity, but you also run the risk of losing your leadership due to injury or poor play. Instead, make the most of these positions of responsibility and rotate your captains. Have them lead stretches for the week, check daily team responsibilities, greet opposing teams, call in scores, and talk to the press.
8. The Team Talks - Your athletic program should not be a self-promotional enterprise in which your goals include getting your name in the paper as often as possible and filling up the sports pages with what you are trying to do. Let your team speak for you. What they say and do is the best possible index of what kind of job you're doing. Live with the reality of the influence you have on them, however great or small. Of course, if you decide not to talk to the press, you will incur their enmity. And most parents will also react negatively, initially. However, once they se their sons' and daughters' quotes in the paper, you will hear no more complaints about the absence of your own wit and wisdom.
9. Coach Players, Not Parents - Parents can often do more damage to team unity than the players can. Emphasize to your players that the team consists of those people who meet and practice in the gym or on the field. You are not coaching parents, so don't try. This doesn't mean you should avoid them or not communicate. Tell your players to inform their parents that you would be happy to discuss your program anytime after practice or after post-game meetings. This policy will help stress to the athlete that team activities take priority over the team's or coach's peripheral relationships. Be sure to talk to your players about how they should handle parental athletic advise and criticism. Always be positive and emphasize the right of parents to criticize. Simply stress that you are paid to make philosophical, technical, and strategical decisions, and you intend to do your job according to your own experience and wisdom.
10. The Ultimate Commitment - Have you ever considered that individual awards are antithetical to a team concept and to team sports? I always point out to my players that if one of them is so much more valuable than the others, then why don't we send the one star out and let him or her play alone? Thus, I have never given an individual award. Yes, it has caused some controversy. Yet, that is easy to defuse. Don't get an ulcer over this principle. Allow your players to vote for whatever awards the athletic director demands that you give. For the most part, as has been my experience, the players will want to choose and give individual awards. Present their choices, and don't worry about it. Then every once in a while, you will get that rare team, which I have had the pleasure of coaching, that will decide not to give any awards, proclaiming the season a team effort.