Our athletic and other extracurricular programs exist to do what academics alone cannot: prepare our children for fully-orbed lives of integrity and grit. 

We want to win games. More fundamentally, we want to win games the right way. If we have to choose between winning in the short-term and doing the right thing, we’ll do the right thing. There may be shortcuts to winning games, but it’s only a shortcut to a dead-end in the long-term. 

Put differently: We don’t just want to win: we want to raise winners, and create a culture of excellence.

The point of the entire season (or collection of seasons) is that our children each individually buy into a system put in place by their coaches and administrators, so that the entire team operates on a level that individually they cannot. 

Disunity and division are the actual opponents here. Great teams operating as one unit win or lose games. Divided teams lose even if they win the games.

My child learning to play their part on a team is a skill they will take with them for the rest of their life, regardless of “field.”

The way my child sees me interact with coaches, referees, and the other teams can make or break everything their coaches are doing to create a winning culture.

• Seeds of distrust will sprout into full-blown disunity and failure. 

• That offhand comment in the car on the way home about how the coach is an idiot because of _____ will be repeated in a text or a locker room.  

• Screaming about a particular call from the sidelines will cause my child (and probably others) to adopt a victim mindset and not perform as well on the next play.

• Telling my kid that they should be getting playing time when the coach has told them otherwise will create resentment, entitlement, and disengagement. 

My child’s coach sometimes only has a few short months to build trust with their athletes. There’s nobody who can short-circuit that trust faster than a parent, guardian, or other supporter. 

Practically what this looks like for Parents, Guardians, and Supporters of Ninety Six High and Edgewood Middle Student Athletes:

1. We assume the best about the motives and intentions of coaches
   • We trust that coaches have the best interests of all student-athletes in mind, and the program winning in view.
   • We do not participate in or encourage gossip and/or slander of coaches.
   • Just because we don’t know the reason for a decision doesn’t mean there isn’t a charitable one. We assume the charitable explanation.
2. We let the coach address the officials, referees, and umpires
   • Beyond the example it sets for our kids, it’s actually the best way to turn a “bad ref” into a “good ref.” Refs don’t like being yelled at any more than we do.
3. When my child has a problem with the coach, I encourage them to resolve it with the coach
   • The two teams are “All of us” vs “the problem” not Parents/Supporters vs Coaches vs Students.
4. When I make a mistake in one of these practical areas, it’s my responsibility to own it and to have the toughness and fortitude to correct the mistake
   • This should be done with the same level of publicity that I made it: public apologies for public mistakes.

Together we can raise a culture of winners.

Respectfully,
Ninety Six Athletic Booster Club

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