The Varsity Crew Team

Sports management is a really broad field, therefore I decided to focus on my minor and one of my major interests of this field: coaching. In this paper I will be explaining my personal five building blocks that make up a well-rounded coaching philosophy and coach. Those blocks are; leadership, organization, attitude, respect, and resiliency. Each of these five aspects are equally important and balance each other out. Leadership, the action of leading a group of athletes towards a goal. Organization, being able to organize a team and have a plan in order to help the team achieve goals. Attitude, it is very important for a coach to have a winning and positive attitude that is contagious to the players. Respect, there has to be a good

Sport’s are an aspect of life that affect societies across the globe. Athletics affect everyone's life, whether that be playing the sport, watching games, or hearing about a sporting event. There is a big difference between playing an individual sport and players relying on their own athletic abilities versus a team sport when members of the team rely on their teammates to complete each individual's specific responsibility to reach the team's goal. Team sports bring people together in countless ways, and they teach many life skills for the athletes that participate in them. Some of these skills include communication, teamwork, discipline, work ethic, dedication, leadership, and numerous more that will help them in their personal and work

Teamwork is an extraordinary characteristic for any organizations or groups to strive to its fullest potential. According to the Greenberg text “An organization is a structured social system consisting of groups and individuals working together to meet upon some agreed-upon objectives.” In the movie Miracle, the theme of teamwork is portrayed through the Men’s Hockey Team’s head coach Herb Brooks leadership in training recent college graduates to play hockey in one of the most challenging competition in the world, which were the 1980s Olympics.

1. What are David’s greatest strengths as a team leader? Greatest developmental needs? How did these strengths and weaknesses affect David’s ability to build a successful team the first time around?

At their finest, coaches perfect their player’s flaws to push them to their potential ability, improve their skills, and create determination within the team. They can expand the importance of such a sport to intensify motivation and the value of good sportsmanship for the sake of not only their reputation, but the outcome that comes from it. Coaches must not lag when it comes to hardships that comes about; they must stay connected. The closer the connection between a player and a coach the better they are moving forward and continuing on the love of the sport and job.

Team Cohesion in the sport setting is the most important factor for group effectiveness, being influenced largely by leadership people. Homogenous attitudes and goals, personal sacrifice, and training and instructing coaching tactics are positively linked to team cohesion, and therefore performance. Cohesion is a dynamic and multidimensial process, and these methods could change depending on initial levels. By examining two scenarios of teams having significantly different levels of cohesion, it can be determined how these tactics are used in contrasting contexts. It was concluded the same tactics were used regardless of initial team cohesiveness, and performance was improved in both cases. A single coach administered these methods, but a case study revealed that multiple team leaders can change the different factors enhancing cohesion and still gets the same performance enhancements. Thus, cohesion does not have to rely on a single leader but multiple figures can have a combined effect.

While working hard is an important factor in being successful in every sport, it is especially prudent in football. The hype behind the sport causes athletes and communities to love the sport. No other sport has a week like homecoming, football players are put on a pedestal and academics are essentially put on hold due to the lack of focus. The entire week focuses on Friday night’s game. This hype draws the biggest and best athletes to want to be a part of the fun—to be on that pedestal. This in turn makes the competition within the sport better. Being on the team isn’t enough though, as my head coach used to say, “Homecoming is fun, but it’s worth nothing if you lose Friday night.” Knowing the entire week is dedicated to one game causes the team to work harder than the athletes in other sports. The standard expected by the coaches carries over to the classroom and into the athlete’s lives outside of high school. Kevin Kniffin, a behavioral scientist as Cornell University, studies and teaches about the leadership skills and character traits of athletes from

The book explains that eliminating person agendas, in a team environment is a great way to move forward as a unit. The five dysfunctions of team should not only be read in work environments, but also to sports teams and other groups whose ultimate goal is the have each member function as one. “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” is a simple read that is clear and straight to the point. Furthermore, rhetoric used and the message provided in the text will most likely be shared in hopes to instill the meaning of teamwork into the mind of someone who didn’t have the opportunity to read this book on teamwork and

I have been part of the varsity swim team for four years now, which I am now a captain of it, reached cadet chief master sergeant in Civil Air Patrol, where I soloed a plane, and other; however, these two accomplishments are the foundations of my goals.

The study “The Relationship Between Ethical and Abusive Coaching Behaviors and Student-Athlete Well-Being” was conducted by Mariya A. Yukhymenko-Lescroart, Michael E. Brown, and Thomas S. Paskus, and was published in the journal Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology. The researchers sought to understand the effects that a coach’s behavior had on a student’s morals, satisfaction, and impressions of team unity. Social-cognitive theory has long thought that we learn by imitating those around us, particularly those in leadership positions. The coaches of sports teams are especially prominent models in a student athlete’s life, given that they have actual authority over the student’s life. The idea of self-efficacy, which suggests that an

It’s often an uphill fight. The ego-driven culture of basketball, and society in general, militates against cultivating this kind of selfless action, even for members of a team whose success as individuals in tied directly to the group performance. Our society places such a high premium on individual achievement, it’s easy for players to get blinded by their own self-importance and lose a sense of interconnectedness, the essence of teamwork.”

Having played a variety of team sports throughout my life, I saw a lot of parallels throughout the class work on team building between positive teamwork and success. Reading Five Dysfunctions of a Team and then applying what we learned from the reading into several team building exercise gave me a unique perspective on how to create and identify key team building skills.

As a student of the Leading Teams in Organizations class at Lipscomb University, I’m required to answer questions regarding the Harvard Business School Case titled “The Army Crew Team”. The case write-up describes a coach’s dilemma regarding an underperforming Varsity Crew team. The Varsity team is consistently losing to the Junior Varsity (JV) team forcing its coach to consider taking drastic actions four days before the National championship. The coach is considering the following three options: switching the Varsity and JV teams, switching individual boat members, or intervening to improve the Varsity team’s performance (Snook & Polzer, 2004). The coach should switch the Varsity and JV teams and

The Army Crew Team is in utter frustration since the team that consisted of the top 8 members with excellent strength and condition, rowing technique, and psychological dimension kept frequently losing the JV team before the national championship race. Facing with this problem, Coach P. hold a meeting with the team members to discuss about the problems among the team. Now on, he has to make a decision among the choices of switching the Varsity and Junior Varsity boat, switching individual boat members or intervening to improve the Varsity boat’s performance.

Effective team members monitor and back-up each other’s performance and are collectively oriented toward the desired outcome. By carefully considering the IMOI model, leadership intervention, and the five keys to improving team performance, organizations can successfully maximize teamwork for the benefit of the organization and the members of the team.