Coach,

Reading the encouragement and advice within these blog posts is one way that you can stay engaged with The Texas Way, but it’s far from the only way.

This week, I’ve got three suggestions to help your team continue to play The Texas Way all year long.

1. Stay Engaged with The Texas Way

The ejection numbers from September showed that out of 259 Ejections, 230 of those were athletes whose coaches are either not registered or are not engaged with The Texas Way. That means roughly 9 out of every 10 ejected players have coaches who are not taking advantage of these free resources.

This is not a new trend; we saw it during the first year of The Texas Way, too. And, within those 230 coaches who had an ejection, 23% of them were signed up for the program, but they were not engaged with it.

The message is clear: Having access to the videos and other resources isn’t enough. Coaches can’t just sign up and expect ejection incidents to decrease. Instead, they must get engaged.

Start with the videos, but don’t stop there. Have conversations about them with athletes and fellow coaches. Put up the posters and point to them when someone’s not playing The Texas Way.

To really make a difference in sportsmanship: Get engaged, and stay engaged.

2. Take the Next Right Step

Every person reading this is likely on a different step. If you just signed up, the next step is to watch the videos available through the dashboard. If you’ve watched the videos, then the next step could be:

• Leading athlete/coach discussions about the videos

• Posting The Texas Way Pillars in the locker room

• Talking to other coaches about how they’re using the resources

• Practicing Bench Protocols

• Letting athletes/coaches roleplay how to speak to officials

Whatever steps you’ve taken, look for the next step you can take. Do the work to keep Respect for Others, Control of Self, and the Spirit of Competition top of mind all year.

Sportsmanship is not just a Fall sports kind of thing. It’s a year-long commitment. As the year goes on, it would be really easy to let The Texas Way fade into the background. Don’t let it.

Stay engaged by always looking for the next step. That’s the main reason we are releasing new material every month!

3. Coach Up Younger Coaches

An official recently told me a story about a 7th-grade football game that brought up an unfortunately common concern. This game was about as low stakes as it could get, yet one of the teams had a young coach who decided to go all the way onto the field to scream and curse at the official over a call that he disagreed with.

In contrast to that behavior: The stadium they were playing in had The Texas Waysigns posted.

The most common complaints from officials are about young coaches. The ones getting into the most trouble and showing the most disrespect are the ones with the least experience in coaching. Often, the younger a coach is, the more volatile they are to officials.

Let’s do the work to train, prepare, and equip these young coaches to handle themselves with more professionalism. Let’s hold them accountable for their actions, of course, but let’s also try to teach them a better way to move forward.

If there’s a junior high or junior varsity coach in your orbit, talk to them about engaging with The Texas Way.

Final Thoughts

I hope that you find these suggestions helpful. More than that, I hope you’ll put them into practice. It is only through action that we can all stay engaged with The Texas Way.

If I can support you or your district, or if you want to share your story, email me atMackey@2Words.tv.