Team leader

“ In order for the head coach to get the maximum from his assistants, he must set a good example. Since others will follow a leader who actually leads, rather than one who merely tells what to do, I believe a head coach must work longer, harder, and stay a jump ahead of his assistants and the other coaches in the profession. He must be dedicated to the game of football, well organized, sound in his thinking, and have the ability to delegate authority and responsibility to his assistants if he expects to build a successful program. ”

“ You're the symbol, the hero these people are going to follow if we put this thing over. They couldn't understand a sextet leadership. They want a leader, someone to dominate and tell them what to do. A team you need, admittedly, but not so much as the team needs you. ”

“ Each team is assigned to a different corner. A leader stands in front of each team with a bean bag, cap, or ball. At the signal to start the leader tosses to and receives from each member of his team in turn the bean bag. Having received the bag from the last one in his line, he takes his place at the foot of the line, and the one at the head of the line becomes leader and proceeds to toss the ball to each member as did the preceding leader. The group, in which all have served as leaders and which successfully completes the game first, wins. ”

“ Need it be said that in any event, going along with the team, and taking an active interest in its ups-and-downs, is not only a service officer's duty, but a rewarding privilege, if he is a real leader? In this respect, he has a singular relationship to any group that represents his unit. He becomes part of their force, and his presence is important not only to the team but to the gallery. It is not unusual to hear very senior officers excuse themselves from an important social function by saying, "I'm sorry, but my team is playing tonight." ”

“ Every doubles team should have a leader to direct its play; but that leader must always be willing to drop leadership for any given point when his partner has the superior position. It is policy of attack not type of stroke that the leader should determine. ”

“ A team consists commonly of twelve dogs, and it is of importance that they should be accustomed to draw together. The quick and steady going of the team, as well as the safety of the traveller, mainly depends on the docility and sagacity of the foremost dog or leader. ”

“ In thirty seconds more they are off—“the staid and steady team,” so styled by the proprietor of the coach. “Let 'em go! and take care of yourselves,” says the artist, so soon as he is firmly seated upon his box; and this is the way they start. The near leader rears right on end ”

“ The same is true of a football team and its campaign, for the captain is the commander of the eleven and on his ability and on the influence of his personality depends largely whether his team is to emerge from its game in glorious victory or in disappointing defeat.
No player should be selected to act as captain who is not a leader in every sense of the word. He should be a player of the very highest individual ability in the first place, for, if he lacks ability to perform his own part in the play, scant will be the confidence which his men will place in him and his commands. ”

“ Must Be a Leader and a Good Student
In order to have winners your boys must be leaders both on and off the field. They should be good students, too. As was indicated previously, if your contract will give you sufficient time to work with the “solid citizens,” they will stay with you even if the going gets tough, and eventually they will be winners. ”

“ When each member not only does his own work as well as possible but plays well into the hands of the other members, we speak of the excellence of the team work. And in nine cases out of ten it is not brilliant individual play, but fine all-round team-work that wins the game. ”

“ It's just that eagerness to aid the next man, that stand-and-fall-together spirit, that makes the ideal team. I don't want to see any man on Saturday standing around with his hands at his sides; as long as the ball's in play there's work for every one. Don't cry 'Down' until you can't run, crawl, wriggle, roll, or be pulled another inch. And if you're helping the runner don't stop pulling or shoving until there isn't another notch to be gained. Never mind how many tacklers there are; the ball's in play until the whistle sounds. ”

“ In the mass-meeting of the school the night before the games, when the boys gathered in loyal force to give their team a “send-off” for the morrow, nothing that was said by student or graduate or friend stirred such response in the hearts of the school as the short, plain, virile exhortation of the captain.
And no athletes need personal inspiration as do the members of a track team. The football player stands shoulder to shoulder with his fellows, the strong helps the weak and shares with him the glory of victory. ”

“ Along with the sense of the team as a mechanical instrument, and unseparated from it in the boy’s mind, is the consciousness of it as the embodiment of a common purpose. There is in team play a very intimate experience of the ways in which such a purpose is built up and made effective. You feel, though without analysis, the subtle ways in which a single strong character breaks out the road ahead [Pg 35] and gives confidence to the rest to follow; how the creative power of one ardent imagination, bravely sustained, makes possible the putting through of the play as he conceives it. ”

“ If the practice is not interesting enough to burn an indelible impression of every rudiment of football into the player's working knowledge, it is wasted. The coach can best instruct his men by putting on his football suit and illustrating exactly what he wants done, not only in fundamentals, but in team play. Confidence of the members of the team, one in the other, and constant interest in how each comrade is developing will in time form a team spirit, a factor quite as potent in carrying a pig-skin as an extra hundred pounds of muscle. ”

“ I mean, Captain Harven, that it is the coach’s place to select the players. That I take to be one of his duties. If he is to instruct a team in football he certainly has the privilege of deciding who shall belong to that team ”

“ The mere fact that they had won, satisfying as it was, counted for little compared with the enormous benefit of the game in welding the team together. It had taken eleven stars and molded them into a team. No individual brilliancy, however great, can atone for the lack of team work. To-day they had tested each other, supported each other, played into each other's hands, forgotten [73] that they were anything but parts of one great, smoothly moving, swiftly running machine. ”

“ Individual strength, wit, courage and agility must be there, but they must weld themselves into a chain that makes every advantage possessed by one of the members of the eleven a common asset--one that is used to its utmost and on every possible opportunity. For the last time, it is team play and only team play that will yield success, and no eleven can get along without it. ”

“ A gate opens at the farther end of the grounds, there is a vociferous cheer from the nearest section and the team in whose success our hopes are centered, trots out on the field, to be met by a tumult of welcome. Big fellows they are, stout of limb and victors through the season over every team they have met. ”

“ The work of each man in playing his position is shown in the chapters on Offense and Defense. As the season progresses, each individual should be studied, not only to discover his capabilities in his own position but to teach where, on certain shifts of the play, he can be used to best benefit the team as a whole. ”

“ I've played the game in my day and I've coached teams, boys, and I think I've got a little [254] of what your coach disclaimed. I mean a sort of—well, not second-sight, but a sort of ability to tell what a team will do from the looks of the players on it. In my profession we have to study human nature a lot and we get so we can classify folks after we've looked them over and watched them awhile. ”

“ He learns not only to take his place in the game, but to judge his companions by their special ability and by their value to the group, rather than by clothes or personal feelings or other outward and incidental facts. All these things the team game teaches as no mere instruction, whether in school or home, can teach. ”

“ I’m only one of eleven players, and my place could be filled. Still, I do flatter myself that I’ve got the team into some kind of machine-like precision, which is very needful in a game. I don’t mean that I’ve done it all alone, for I haven’t. Every man has done more than his share, and with a coach like Mr. Lighton, and a captain like Holly Cross, a fellow can do a lot. ”

“ He goes on, determined to play a better game, and realizes he must hold his place at the training table by hard, conscientious work.
One is not unmindful of the traditions that are centered about the board where so many heroes of the past have sat. You have a keen realization of the fact that you are filling the seat of men who have gone before you, and that you must make good, as they made good. Their spirit lives.
The training table is a great school for team spirit. To have a successful team, any coach will tell you, there must be a brotherly feeling among the members of the team. ”

“ The triumph of the trained imagination in still holding its sense of organization under such circumstances is a notable one; especially when, as in the most successful teams, the player 's grasp of the whole movement is of so masterly and flexible a nature as to be adequate not merely to carrying out a prearranged manœuvre in a rigid and unadaptable form, but to sharing with the other members of the team in the intuitive perception of such modifications as may be required by instant and unforeseen emergency. ”

“ My idea of perfect play Is when a team performs strictly as it has been coached to perform ... following a system through to the very last regardless of the breaks of the game or the preconceived notions of the individual players. That is team-work in the fullest—that is genuine football. That you failed to win does not alter the fact that you gave a faultless exhibition insofar as your experience and training permitted. ”

“ The men must chum together on and off the field. Team work on the field is made much easier if there is team work off the field.
I never hear the expression "team mates" used but I recall a certain Princeton team, the captain of which was endowed with a wonderful power of leadership. There was nothing the men would not do for him. Every man on the team regarded him as a big brother. ”

“ There is not much territory remaining, and the big questions are, “Who is going to come out on top?” and “Who will end up with the ball when the dust settles?” If we give our team a sound plan and teach it to them well, and they believe in it and in us, we will do all right. ”

“ Such an atmosphere frees in the man the instincts of ambition and construction and thus promotes interest, inventiveness and constructive criticism and suggestion.
Teamwork.—The meaning of teamwork and its importance to the success of an undertaking are easily understood, but its practical application to our daily affairs is not always so easily brought about. Too often selfish interests seem to stand in the way, and it is necessary in some way to make the interests of the team appear of greater importance to the individual than his own. ”

“ The successful business head to-day makes himself the captain of a team whose members co-operate intelligently for the team's success. For this purpose he brings them together in a body where shoulder to shoulder they feel their comradeship in a common cause; where they all get the inspiration of their captain's personal leadership, and absorb enthusiasm from his personal presentation of his hopes and plans. All are thus filled with a common purpose and return to their tasks each better fitted and more highly determined to play his part to the best advantage of the larger organization. ”

“ The first trait, “Be dedicated to the game of football,” is a must for all coaches, assistants as well as head coaches. Don’t ever try to fool yourself or anyone else. If you are not truly dedicated to your work, and you dread spending many hours every day working and planning on building a good football team, then you are in the wrong business. I’ll guarantee there is no easy way to develop a winning team. If it were an easy task, all of us would be undefeated and “Coach of the Year.” ”

“ The relation of the members to one another in a well-organized team amounts to an affection which is never forgotten. The words of cheer when the team is hard pushed and has to take a "brace"; the fighting spirit that plays the game to a finish, no matter what the odds ”

“ Take eleven corking men, each one a master of his position, and get them so that they play together like a well-oiled machine, and then run them up against a team of ordinary players without much team-work or anything else except a great, big, overwhelming desire to win, and what happens three times out of four? ”

“ Every fellow deserves a certain amount of credit for what the one member of the team perfects, just how much depending on how close to the play he was. That’s understood. But they don’t all take off their head guards and bow when the stand cheers the hero. ”