How To Make A Healthy Balance Of A Football Team

Introduction

While competition and cooperation can be looked at as night-and-day mindsets, I believe through my experiences that an athlete can practice a healthy balance of both competition and cooperation with ones teammates and opponents. First and foremost, cooperation with teammates and coaching staff should be the concrete foundation to a team. Having strong relationships and understandings of one another can be a relationship that is developed around and strengthen with competition. I remember as a junior in high school, going on a visit to the University of Toledo for football. The coach at the time was Tim Beckman, what he preached was strength through competition. Everything from morning wake up calls, to weekly lifting competitions,

When I agreed to move to England, I became part of a group of 7 other American students, coming together in a foreign country as graduate assistant player/coaches for Durham University’s American Football program. This melting pot of Americans came from all over the country, from different schools, different backgrounds, and different personalities all put together into one think thank of a program. From an individual who comes from the small school division three of Oberlin University, to players who played in the pageantry of the division one programs of the Big 10. I took over Offensive Coordinator duties, while a colleague who hailed from the University of Iowa took over the position of Defensive Coordinator. While we all had different past experience whether it be football or life, but we were brought here for one goal – winning a national championship for Durham

As a group of coaches, we were informed, and knew it would be a situation that would test our team’s cooperation, relationships and mental toughness. This individual was a player and a coach, and we were afraid that when the rest of the team caught word they would have a negative attitude towards him, create a lack of respect for someone in a position of power and seniority. While we decided to not address the situation as a group, of course through natural progression the team found out about the lifestyle choices of their teammate and coach. While no one directly had any personal issues with the situation, there was definitive mood shift, and lack of respect shown. No longer was this individual a vocal center for the team, no longer were individuals looking to him for certain skills and advice, and because of this the cooperation within the squad was in balance. The season ended, and relationships remained intact, but I will never forget the complete shift in respect and opinion towards this individual that blatantly and negatively affected his cooperative ability with his