The Golden Nugget
“What’s the best piece of coaching advice,” a young wanna-be recently asked me, “you received early in your career?”
“Stand and clap - no matter what - during the play-offs.”
I don’t know if that’s the best piece of advice I’ve ever been given or if it’s simply the one that elbowed its way to the front of my mind, into my throat and past my lips, but it’s been living in my head for over 30 years.
Kellie Harper, former head coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols (CCO 1.0)
The legendary coach who dropped this dime did so as a casual aside. We were in the hospitality room of a high school gym during a holiday co-ed basketball tournament where our team had just won in the opening round. While the boys were playing, I’d ducked in to have a bowl of homemade chili and a brownie as I waited to scout our upcoming opponent in the game that would be played next. The sage, wearing his trademark royal blue mascot-monogrammed polo shirt and low-slung corduroys secured by a tightly cinched belt, was recently retired and a roaming fixture at the court that would soon bear his name.
I don’t remember what preempted the golden nugget, but the way the championship coach immediately modeled what he said is burned into my brain.
With a wry smile and a golf clap he showed me how to win.
I can’t say that I had often seen him do this in real time. A “You got this!” cheerlead-y stance was certainly not his resting posture. Coach was more of a stomper. And a scowler. Curmudgeon-ness was sort of his m.o. Looking back, perhaps that’s what made his words so sticky. Juxtaposed against his everyday demeanor, his happy-encourager face felt novel. Like an encrypted strategy saved for the tipping point.
I wrote his words of wisdom atop my pre-game notes before every play-off game.
“Stand, clap – and smile.”
If we won the tip and missed the opening lay-up, I’d do my best to do it. I’d stand, clap and smile. If our post guy was wide open and we lobbed it out of bounds, I’d pop up, put my hands together and force my lips to bow. While I can’t say for sure that it always made things better, I can say, without hesitation, that it never made things worse.
The secret ingredient, it seemed, for prevailing when the outcome mattered most had nothing to do with ball.
Winning big so rarely does.
Underneath coach’s simplistic advice was an intricate understanding of both the game and human nature. While chiding and challenging were his regular-season shapers, those weapons went back in the toolbox during the championship chase. By the time the play-offs roll around, a team knows what they know. They do what they can do. Improvement can still occur, but it does so in tiny unintentional increments. Thinking about doing things better—especially when your want-to is jumping out of the gym-- almost always gets in the way. The ideal mental landscape in any performance, really, but in high stakes games, particularly, is a tranquil fluid one. One where “how,” “what,” “when,” and “why” lie quietly under the surface undergirding what an athlete senses and feels. Coach wanted his horses to run free in that space. His bodily and facial expression was his way of cutting the reins.
Through this past week of the Olympics, positive feedback from the coach has been on full display. While visible from the sideline in volleyball or basketball and the bleachers in swimming or track, it’s nowhere more vividly apparent than from the edge of the bouncy floor in gymnastics. The world crowds around to watch in awe as acrobatic athletes perform gravity-defying feats with the goal of perfection - though even so much as an inconspicuous crooked leg can keep it from being so. We (those of us who don’t understand the first thing about what is actually going on) see the talented competitors wobble and bobble knowing that deductions per unintended wiggle are flying off the final score. Yet, when the tumbler finally freezes and the camera pans to the coach, he has two fists in the air like goalposts and a full-toothed grin across his face.
The time for critique is later. His job in the middle of a fight for the title is to not get in the way.
What works on the biggest stage in the world also works in a high school gym (as well as all sorts of other places in between.) Like silicone that smooths a scar, three claps and a smile can make the worries go away. And almost everything gets better when you’re not afraid it won’t.