Tips of the Trade

Seven Dartmouth coaches talk about leadership, discipline and the rules of the coaching game.

As A DARTMOUTH ATHLETE, I BENefited from good coaching. I knew I was cared about, and I was part of a winning program. Now, as an assistant coach for the women's basketball team, I'm drawing on my exposure to head coaches across a wider spectrum. I've learned that these leaders got into coaching for similar reasons: a love of sport and the desire to teach. Their styles vary, but they share avision. They care more about teaching their sport than anything else—and a lot of what they teach can be applied beyond athletics. Here's a bit of their wisdom, in their own words.

LEADERSHIP IS...

"The ability to get people to do something extraordinary that they wouldn't be able to do alone. It's creating a team. It's done through motivation, communication, strategy, passion, mentoring. It's about caring and being a role model. We don't always have the luxury of recruiting the players who best fit our style, so we have to adjust and adapt."

BOB GAUDET '81, men's hockey coach

"Establishing power. And once you gain that authority, power unused is the most powerful thing you have."

CHRIS WIELGUS women's basketball coach

"Picking the right people and being yourself. You won't succeed unless you take care of the people you're working with. There are a lot of models out there for leadership. But the key component is that the coach/teacher/leader/parent has to have his or her own personality, because that's what's going to shine through brightest."

MARK HUDAK, women's hockey coach

COMMUNICATION REQUIRES...

"Delivering passion on an individual basis. You need to know what will make one player fire, and this won't be the same for everyone. I need to find that special something that makes each of my guys tick."

JEFF COOK men's soccer coach

"Engaging the players on a daily basis. I do this during unstructured time at the beginning of practice. For the first 5-10 minutes, I let my athletes shoot around freely. During that time, I pick two or three kids to connect with each day. This provides a way for me to engage them in a non-sport specific way. The kids who can only engage about sport itself are the toughest ones to lead, and the toughest to follow.

HUDAK

"Building a team like a family, where everyone is really important."

GAUDET

"Talking about everything from playing time to schoolwork, to family life and relationships. As a younger coach I drew lines. I didn't allow myself to get close to the players. Hence the nickname, 'The General.' About five years ago the captains said they wanted to know me more as a person and they wanted me to know more about them."

AMY PATTON, women's lacrosse coach

"Talking openly and honestly. Perhaps in the past I'd be thinking through things internally, but I wasn't sharing that enough with the team. If you observe a coach in training, it's amazing how many times a coach will talk only to the top players. I check in with each player, to make a visual and verbal connection."

COOK

"Speaking directly. I don't like the water cooler approach to problem solving, where if there is a complaint, the athletes huddle around the water cooler. My oneon-one rapport with the players happens in working with them in the gym, through skill development. Essentially I speak through the game." —WIELGUS

"Getting to know everyone on your team—even when you have 100 guys. I'll walk up and down the practice field, conversing here and there. I'll talk to janitors, faculty, other students, the lunchroom staff, all just to get an idea what my player is like. This is a small community, so I check in with people outside our tight circle. Then I check in with my athlete, and I bring up what I've heard. I've found that doing this helps people understand that I have a concern and awareness about them outside of football."

-BUDDY TEEVENS '79 football coach

DISCIPLINE MEANS...

"Structure. With that comes a sense of comfort, a safe haven to learn. You can't execute and you can't teach without it. We all innately want to be disciplined."

TERRY DUNN, men's basketball coach

"Accountability. It's about laying out expectations immediately and clearly and sticking to them. It's about sticking to the 'harder right' over the 'easier wrong.' "

HUDAK

"Realizing that women need to be empowered, not enabled. You have to letyour players grow and give them freedom to do SO."

WIELGUS

"Guiding your team to make their own rules and regulations. We talk a lot about how people would perceive us from the outside. If someone were to watch us train or watch us in the locker room or around campus, what would they think? This allows the players to hold themselves accountable."

COOK

"Putting down the rules and identifying guys with similar values during the recruiting process. If they are unable to adhere to stipulations such as timeliness and no drug use, they eliminate themselves."

TEEVENS

"Being demanding, not demeaning. It's for the better of the group. It's about you and your behavior affecting the team, either positively or negatively." —PATTON

"Holding people accountable. I'm not a guy who loves confrontation. But you have to do what you have to do. I represent something that's bigger than I am."

GAUDET

"Being willing to be unpopular. Sometimes I've been accused of being too harsh, too difficult, or unrealistic. Well, so be it. Being successful is hard work."—DUNN

DEVELOPING TEAM CULTURE MEANS...

"Devoting a lot of time to team chemistry and team bonding. We do this through leadership training and team challenges, to get our athletes out of their comfort zones and put them in a position to laugh together or to switch gears and be focused. It shows us who our leaders are and how our team communicates."

PATTON

"Getting your athletes more skilled, better conditioned. When you actually teach them something, you've got them. The more the Dartmouth athletes put in, the less likely they are to squander it. Motivation is important, because their sport isn't a job to these kids. It's a passion."

WIELGUS

"Pushing a public image. When I took over this program, there seemed to be a perception that my guys were dumb jocks. I told my guys to introduce themselves to their professors. I also implemented a 'sit with a stranger' program where, for lunch on Wednesdays, I asked my guys to sit with someone they didn't know. I also told our guys to talk to people as they walked across campus. And smile. In class, my guys are told to sit in the front and I want them there on time. It's about respect for people. This translates into respect for your teammates."

TEEVENS

"Agreeing upon common goals. I like [Miami Heat head coach] Pat Riley's approach. He feels his job is to make sure that everyone does what they said they wanted to do in the first place. Our process follows that. We get our guys to express why they're playing soccer and what they want for the program."

COOK

"Defining our program. We asked our team to come up with an image to do so. They decided that was me. So they traced me. And in this diagram they put words that were important to them, like 'heart, trust, pride.' On the outside of the traced body they put distractions, like 'schoolwork, health, playing time, roles being defined, media, injuries.' This exercise forced us to talk about things that are hard, and got them in the open. That collective identity is our team culture."

PATTON

COURTNEY BANGHARTzi Dartmouth's all-time leader in three-point shooting. She was in-ducted into the Wearers of the Green in 2004.