WE ARE MINNESOTA. As an athlete at the university, I recently found myself questioning what that meant in the realm of my sport. This led me to seek out a conversation with my coach where I asked what Minnesota [rowing] exactly is. Obvs, we're it. But what is it? Having been on the team for a couple of years, I could almost guess what she was going to say, but I needed words. I was looking for words that I could substitute for the word "Minnesota", as well as words that I could use when trying to understand my/our purpose. I felt that hearing my own coach describe to me what Minnesota rowing was would help me understand what I was "buying into". This seemed important to my development as a DI athlete- I truly believe that to achieve great things you need to do it wholeheartedly and knowing the philosophy of Minnesota rowing would help me take that commitment one step further. It's safe to say that I don't regret having this conversation with my coach.
If one of my athletes were to ask me what my coaching philosophy was, I wouldn't really know what to say. With that being said, thank goodness I don't have any athletes (yet). Okay, I have some idea of what kind of basic principles I want to direct my team by, but I think that the level of the team that I am coaching, the definition/extent of these principles will alter slightly. Going off of the exercise we did in class, my response would probably be something like this:
We are excellence.
Whether we are in class, at home, at work, at practice, we will strive for excellence. If we are going to spend the time doing something, we will do it right and we will do it well.
We are disciplined.
There are going to be work-outs we don't feel like doing and studying we think we could skip, but we will remain disciplined to do what needs to be done.
We are supportive.
Our team is part of our family. Regardless of our ability level, we will support one another. The amount of support that we provide to one another will determine the amount of excellence (see above) we achieve.
This is me and this is my philosophy, for now.
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