Pride is a state of mind vital for any champion to have—pride in yourself, your accomplishments, your team, and your school. But there is a flip side to pride—boasting and self-interest that can bring a championship-caliber team to its knees. So how does a coach ensure his or her team does not fall into the negative state of pride? Humility. Webster defines humility as modesty in self-examination and humbleness. For a Christian, the definition is simpler—to become like Christ. Jesus had every opportunity to boast and brag. After all, he was the Son of God.

There is an old story about a coach who was about to drown in a lake. A passerby jumped in and saved him. After the rescue, the coach went to visit his lifesaver to thank him. The coach said, “Sir, thank you for saving my life. I owe you everything.” The lifesaver responded, “Coach, you owe me nothing. Just see to it that you were worth saving.”

A successful gymnast has rhythm, confidence, and a strong body—but most vitally, power and control. With power, a gymnast can whip her body around a bar to gain momentum for a dismount. She can vault herself high enough over an apparatus to flip and twist her body in the air. She can leap off the ground and complete numerous harrowing tumbling passes during a floor routine. Power is important to these young athletes.

We all think about the fun and excitement of a big game, but we are at our best only if we have been committed to working hard in preparation beforehand. In baseball, we like to dream about getting the game-winning hit or throwing the rally-ending strike out, but that will likely only come true if we put sweat and practice into making ourselves better. Baseball success, like any other sport, comes when we do the behind-the-scenes work. This means that when we are at home, we need to be running, doing the exercises our coaches assign and getting enough sleep. And in practice, we must work on mechanics, think through game situations and do all the repetitions of batting, running the bases and backing up throws. All of this preparation gets us ready for game time.

Hockey Chat:  You don’t hear of penalties given for blocking the goalies view even though they hate when someone stands in front of them “screening” and then a puck trickles in unseen.  There is no rule in the rule book about that therefore it’s an OK tactic.  The goalie would like to make up that rule but if everyone got to write up their own rules for the book the game would be a mess.

As a young coach I had a sign on my office door: “Rules for Our Program. Rule 1. The Coach is always right. Rule 2. If you think the coach is wrong, see Rule 1.” My players always thought that was funny and, remarkably, true most days. Throughout athletics, rules govern the game. Our lives are no different.