A Great Teammate

“No matter how your workout is going- you can still be a great teammate.”

This is something I tell athletes almost every day. Whether they are having a good workout/day or an off one, they can always be a valuable teammate.

The behaviors and qualities of a great teammate are:

• A contagious positive energy on both their good days and the bad. They have a positive attitude in the middle of a bad event/situation/mood.
• Willing to put a teammate’s needs ahead of their own
• Those who continue to push themselves and their teammates to be better than yesterday. They are an example of our shared standard of excellence.

Say an athlete is having an off workout or day. Directing athletes to turn their attention to helping their teammates with their workouts, while still training to the best of their ability on that day, accomplishes a lot of things. Athletes now have a new motivation- they are not just running for themselves, rather now to help their teammates. Diverting their attention from their own misery, this helps make the workout go by faster and reduce the perceived discomfort. Before they know it, the workout is over and a new bond has been formed. A new moment has been added to their long term confidence memory bank of a time when they did not give in when it would have been easy to do so and they helped make the team better as a part of this.

This has now turned an off day to a successful one because they were able to help the TEAM be better that day. This same motivation can be used in the midst of a race- reminding athletes they are running for the team and their teammates. This incorporates a much higher level of motivation than just running for one’s self.

“Show me your friends and I will show you your future.”

I am a big believer in the principle that what gets rewarded gets repeated. Recognizing, highlighting, and rewarding the above qualities of great teammates lead to them being repeated. Repeated behavior becomes habit. Habits are the ingredients of a team’s culture. I believe that a team’s culture is defined as “the way we do things here.” The way we doing things is that we are good teammates, regardless of our own personal circumstances.

When a team is made up of great teammates, that is when cool things happen. Not only athletically, but this is how life long friendships are built. Above and beyond their days as athletes, these teammates become a support system for life beyond distance running!

The ultimate goal of scholastic sports is to prepare athletes to be good people as adults. Because athletes were good teammates on their off days, they know they can be good people in the world regardless of circumstances.