The local suburban paper is running a series on the best 25 high school football teams in the area for the last 25 years. It will be running during these weeks leading up to the beginning of fall sport previews.

I was a strength coach for one of those teams highlighted.

In 2003, I was the strength coach at Columbus Academy and our team won the state title that year. One of the key players on that team was my old assistant, Bryan Morosky. There was a lot of talent on that team and Bryan was one of several players that made All-State recognition. At the time, they were the third highest scoring team ever in the state of Ohio.

One of the quotes from our coach, Jim Collis, caught my eye. It was this – “What stood out was how they practiced. They were a special group in terms of work ethic.”

And that is what I want to talk about. After last week’s blog post, when I basically said some kids were just plain out lazy, this was a great quote to discuss.

It doesn’t surprise me that Allen Iverson never won a championship after he famously said, “Practice?! We’re talking about practice!” Yeah buddy, we are talking about practice. You know practice where it was said Michael Jordan was always the best practice player for his teams because he wanted to make everybody better.

I think that work ethic does take a while to develop in athletes, but you need to work hard in everything that is going to make you better as an athlete – practice, workouts, even studying film. Especially if you are participating in a team sport. If everybody is working hard pulling their own weight, you develop that chemistry needed to be successful.

There is nothing more frustrating when you feel your teammate is slacking in practice. Only the rare individuals can turn it on for gametime and usually they are working hard. Who knows if this slacker has that type of ability. Chances are NO!

I had a teammate who never consistently gave it his all in practice. Sometimes he would, sometimes he wouldn’t. Thus, you questioned his reliability come gametime. One basketball practice him and I almost came to blows because I had it with his goofing around during practice. Consequently, it ruined team chemistry and our team didn’t go very far in the tournament.

There were many track practices where he would hide in the woods in the middle of practice to avoid running. Once again, he never made it the state meet.

Hey, if you just want to play for the sake of playing and don’t care if you win or lose that is your choice. Unfortunately, a lot of us love the spirit of competition and want to come out on top. For a lot of the individual events in track, you not making it anywhere is on you and affects only you. A team sport on the other hand affects a lot of athletes when you can’t handle your end of the bargain.

That state title team I worked with was special. I had to kick them out of the weight room. They were competitive with their workouts. It went beyond just going through the motions with the lifts. They wanted to beat their max and the next guy’s max.

They obviously had some talent, because you can’t win on just hard work alone. But, what was shown was what that talent can do when you develop it with hard work. Yes, there was some luck involved, but if they hadn’t been working hard right from the get-go then maybe the state title wouldn’t have happened.

I’m not talking about day 1 that year, but day 1 their freshman year. Or maybe day 1 in 7th grade.

BOTTOM LINE: A coach will never get mad at you for working hard. No matter what you are doing, whatever drill it may be, go as fast/hard as you can, and do that drill to the best of your ability. I can’t promise that you will win a state title by working hard, but I can promise you that you won’t come close to a state title if you choose not to work hard.

Photo courtesy of Jake Bellew on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakework/