Coaching Principles With Jason Witt

Coach Jason Witt sits down with America’s Online LAX Goalie Coach Damon Williams to talk coaching principles, mentorship, and why every job a Head Coach assigns is important.

In this episode of the LAX Goalie Rat podcast, Damon pulls out some of his favorite Coach Witt Tweets and discusses them in depth with him. Up until this point on the podcast (39 episodes worth), all guests had been lacrosse goalies and/or lacrosse goalie coaches. While you won’t hear any lacrosse X’s and O’s in the episode, what you will hear are tips on how to build great teams, how to be a great leader, and be a great coach.

The LAX Goalie Rat Podcast is a weekly deep dive into interviews, strategy, and advice for dominating lacrosse goalie position. Coach Damon Wilson created the podcast to interview an elite lax goalie, coach, or special guest to find the tools, tactics, drills, and mental mindsets that listeners can use on a weekly basis. To support and visit the site (and search other relevant coaching tips) here is the conversation recap.

Listed below are the conversations and principles detailed in the podcast:

The age old, you know, practice makes perfect and perfectly good practice leads to perfection. I find myself spending an enormous amount of time at the high school level, correcting bad habits that have been learned through unperfect practice. Anytime that you step on the ice (or any playing surface) to purposefully try and be better as an athlete, it should be in a correct capacity and be with 100% effort. Every moment, every practice is vitally important. And not only that, but vitally important that you are completing skills and growing as an athlete correctly and with perfect form. Done perfectly, is better than done quickly. Practices is where you build skill, games are where you perform those skills.

There are ancillary traits that make athletes that are really good at the sport really great. In ice hockey, if you’re a good skater, a good shooter, you’re probably going to be one of the better kids on the team. But I’ve also found if you are really good at mental traits too – that can push an ordinary athlete into an exceptional athlete. Positivity, encouragement, mental toughness, empathy, tenacity, gratitude, things like that. Those are “heart” trait and they come from an internal drive within or an internal motivation that makes them great. They don’t rely on something coming externally telling them they are great. Every team is made up of different athletes each having different skills. I purposefully fill my teams with heart traits. In competitive sports, it’s more than how good you are at the sport – It’s how good you are as a person.

I learned early on to be ok with not being the best coach ever. I also that I don’t know is not an admission that you’re not a great coach. I will never know everything, because the moment when I do know everything, everything will change in sports. It’s the very nature of sports. When I can build a relationship with an athlete, or a parent, or administrator, to have an environment where I can honestly say, I don’t know, but I will find out that answer – I feel like that is where trust is built. I’m a big believer of the phrase “if you can do everything, you can do nothing for me.” I believe inherently that we all have skills and knowledge that we should be considered an expert at. And I think it’s okay, that one person isn’t an expert in everything. One of the best things a coach can bring to the table is identify areas where they need to get better and continuously be a learner to get better. As athletes are growing, we too as coaches are growing with them in some capacity.

It’s inherent that high level elite athletes want to be great, and that they will do whatever it takes to continuously work for it. I think the same can be said for for elite coaches – that they always want to be getting better for their own satisfaction. Similar to an athlete, we want to make sure that ew have the right tools to be able to equip athletes to get better. I could go cliché after cliché, the common denominator will always be rooted in the desire to be a constant learner. Continuously get better at your craft. When you put yourself (or create the) environment of positivity and encouragement, and couple it with constant learning or the capacity or the desire to constantly learn – you put yourself in a position – you put your athletes and fellow coaches within that organization in a position to succeed be on their wildest dreams.

Study after study teaches us the mental effects of poor body language after a mistake. It’s easier to see when mistakes have been made from the bench or stand by coaches, parents, and team members. If we create an environment where making a mistake is not only allowed (i.e., a safe environment where a player won’t be benched or taken out of further playing time situations), but encouraged – we equip them with the right mental skills to be able to overcome that adversity and mistake. I expect players (and coaches) to have positive body language, encourage teammates, and overcome adversity. What happened on the last shift doesn’t matter anymore. It’s the next shift that matters, the next play after. When all eyes are on you, how you respond in that situation can really set the tone for your team, and yourself to overcome.

We learn a lot in adversity, specifically when it happens on the scoreboard. Defeat helps us identify urgently what areas we can lean into (both individually and as a team) and discover how we can turn that identification into planned improvement. A lot of times it takes defeat to really bring those to light. When you’re still winning it’s not as urgent that you correct things like defeat does. Having a locker room full of players who desire to self assess, and to make improvements or identify areas of needed improvement is key. Ask yourself always: How do I get better at my part of contributing to a successful outcome. And then do it. Consistently.

From a coaching standpoint, and really a development standpoint, I am not interested or a supporter of kids playing up and down. They should be allowed to experience success within their age group. If done correctly however, a team should be allowed to move up an age group because it’s a better matchup. I think there is value in playing similar aged kids, in fact I would suggest it, but I don’t think coaches should purposefully put on the schedule only teams that that are going to make their win/less record look good. I’m less concerned as a coach on whether we win a game or whether we showed that we have improved from the last game, or identified areas where we can improve for the next game.

My first couple years were probably a little bit more stressful and less successful than I would have liked. I still had a lot to learn especially about delegation of responsibilities. What I did learn though, was that every every task that can be assigned from a team throughout the year is important. Little responsibilities lead to big responsibilities. Every job should be looked at as an important part of making the team better. If you’re assigned water bottles, then own that job. The only surefire way to get more responsibility is to do the responsibility that you’ve been assigned so great that you’re ready for more responsibility. Know the importance of doing the little things, and doing them well. And do them with good energy, encouragement, and body language.

Give everything your everything. And then some.

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