7 Comments

  1. ataramona

    Clay, I enjoyed reading your paper and hearing the perspectives from recent athlete. The following are some quotes that I found important:
    – “Coaches don’t always look for the most talented players. In fact, coaches now a days look for great attitudes on and off the floor and if they are coachable.” Pg.5
    This component to recruiting, in athletics or any organization, is important for us to acknowledge. It reminds me of the quote ‘hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.’ From my experiences, I think that this concept can be lost when one is transitioning from one level to the next. Any group or organization that aspires to be successful needs to acknowledge that attitude is contagious. In order ensure success, we need to foster a healthy environment with people that are driven towards the same goal.

    – “Teamwork can also maximize strengths and reduce weakness. In team sports, team members work together in order to win. Individual weaknesses can be minimized through the efforts of the team.” Pg.8
    I liked this portion as well. Working together benefits everyone in the group. A team that only cares about their individual success does not translate to group success. I also liked the saying “1+1=3”. It shows that by combining each individuals strengths will overcome the weaknesses.

  2. rmayhan

    Your paper on Teamwork in Athletics can truly apply to real world applications. All those skills you mentioned, such as collaboration, listening, conflict management, conflict resolution, positive attitude, and team attitude are skills students need to build upon not just in team sports but in everyday cooperative learning situations. These skills are the basic foundation , as many former graduates you mentioned can attest to, of real-world situations. In my fourth grade class for instance, I have a team that I am trying to teach these exact skills too. They are nine to ten year old students. They do not always realize that the comments they make can bring down the team especially in a group project. They sometimes cannot understand why their ideas are not the ideas the team has chosen to solve a challenge but a collective combination of the individual members’ ideas which become the team plan. Sometimes, they would rather just wait until an adult comes to question them about why the group process has stopped in finishing the set goal for the day. More often than not, they want to blame their teammates for the stagnate work as opposed to looking at how they contributed to the stagnation. As a teacher, I try to find ways to instill the team mentality to get the job at hand done. But it can be a challenge depending on the age and grade level. I find it much easier to work with junior high students who are a bit more cognizant of the “we” as opposed to the “me” in group work. It is a work in progress but one that has so many long standing benefits. We will continue to build these skills because they are life lasting that go beyond the classroom and field.

  3. jclifford

    Clay ,

    Really liked this paper. I thought you addressed the the aspects of teamwork and how important a positive teamwork is to a team. We’ve all been in those teams that have talent in almost every positive but for some reason it just doesn’t click; your paper really helps paint the picture as to why teams that have a good environment and are on the same path, sharing similar goals are usually the most successful.

    I thought it was interesting what you said about coaches wanting kids who are coachable. This is really important to me as a coach. A kid can have all the talent in the world but if they’re not willing to be coached and get on the same page then that player can very quickly become a cancer on the team.

  4. kbarton

    I found this to be very interesting. I recently had an experimental project for my classes in which students wrote a collaborative essay. This turned out to be a disaster because the student did not know how to work in a team. They did not understand that by not doing their part could bring down the entire team. When reading your paper. In the end, I found their inward desire, or lack thereof, to success is what ultimately made the group fail to complete their projects and do what the assignment asked of them. In a sense, I feel that your paper can be directly related to what a teacher experiences in a classroom.

  5. mlopez100

    Clay, I could pretty much take all that you shared and apply it to the school environment (students and teachers). I just had a meeting with the middle school department on what we wanted to share with our incoming students and parents for the 6th Grade and we decided that we didn’t want to focus on the objectives so much as to focus on the life skills that we are going to teach their children to apply in the real world. You gave great examples of that. One quote that stood out was when you said, “Working with different backgrounds and personality types will help me learn how to with people in the real world” (p. 7). This is what we ultimately want our students to do as well. That is why it feel it is important to have those group assignments and allow them to problem solve and find solutions if a disagreement or difference of opinion arises. Also, having that “team” mentality with our faculty allows for us to foster that relationship of a common vision and mission that in turn creates the culture and climate we want to enhance in our school community. Your quote, “Teamwork can also maximize strengths and reduce weakness” (p. 8) can definitely be applied to not only to our faculty and staff, but also our school community (parent, parishioners, and stakeholders). As our students go through our schools, using the teamwork approach will only enhance their skills on cooperation, collaboration, and respecting others perspectives in outside situations that they may encounter.

  6. aboone

    I found your discussion of roles and trust to be very insightful. First, there is the necessity of everyone clearly understanding their role and how it contributes to the collective team goal. However, you also offer that trusting everyone on the team to do their role is just as essential. I think in following that logic, any team leader- be they a coach, manager, or principal needs to place a priority on building trusting relationships among their team members. In the classroom, this could likely translate to letting student collaborative groups spend time on accomplishing fun, nonsensical tasks that help them practice communication and trust-building, as well as reflecting on their process and its missteps or successes, in a low-stakes way before tasking them with a project that has a grade attached to it.

    The skills of communication, conflict management, listening, being reliable, and respect are also all part of a strong socio-emotional development. As you have said, these translate well to the world outside of a sports team. Because of that, I think its important for coaches to give players concrete examples of how the teamwork skills they are developing will help them off the field or court. This is much like how teachers are tasked with creating assignments that help students see the real world application of the knowledge and skills they gain in class. It seems to me that coaches and teachers have a lot to share with each other, and in the school setting, would likely benefit from collaborative discussions and projects about how to develop those teamwork skills in students in a unified way.

  7. cbriseno4

    All of these skills can be applied in any organization whether it be education, athletics etc.. Some important statements that stood out to me were:
    “being a good team member means being able to clearly communicate your ideas with the group. You must be able to convey information via phone, email, and in person.”
    Whether its teammates, coaching staff, coach to player, communication plays a big role in any kind of success. Successful communication derives from the example lead by the coach. When coaches lead by example and demonstrate how to properly communicate, this behavior is then reciprocated by the players.
    Another statement was: “being a reliable teammate or co-worker. You want to be a reliable team member so that your co-workers can trust you.” Trust is essential when working together as a team. If you cannot trust a teammate, a coach, someone in the organization, there is no way teamwork can be successful and you did a good job on touching base with that.
    Lastly, I liked:
    “in fact, coaches now a days look for great attitudes on and off the floor and if they are coachable.” With wanting to become a coach and being an “uncoachable” kid when I was younger, I had coaches who didn’t give up on me and helped me develop into the player I aspired to be. Yes, coaches want coachable players, but I do believe that I can make an impact on those who aren’t coachable because I took the hard road and went down that path. I want to make a difference for those players who aren’t all picture perfect so that they can be successful down the road.

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