It Takes Discipline to Demand Discipline

Every coach in America wants his or her team to have discipline on game day. They want focus, attention to the little things, a blind eye and ear to distractions.

But can a coach just flip the discipline switch on game day? Is that something a coach can expect and demand without instilling it throughout the weeks and months leading up to games? I think not. Actually, I KNOW.

I used to have a saying in my classroom as a high school English teacher: “Discipline: If you have the noun, you won’t need the verb.” I’d let kids figure out the parts of speech and what the saying meant. It applies to coaching just the same.

In order to have a disciplined team, a coach must have a disciplined program. A disciplined program means having strict discipline in practice and in everything you do. I don’t mean punishment when I use the word “discipline.” I mean applying a standard and holding to it. Having some “stick to it” attitude about the things that matter to you.

You endorse the things you allow as a coach. If you allow kids to be late without consequence, you are endorsing being late. If you allow kids to talk back to you in practice, you endorse them talking back to game officials on the floor. You can’t expect them to do differently than you allow every day in your program.

“Discipline” the noun requires “discipline” the verb to attain. It takes work. It takes repetition. It takes building habits of discipline. It takes correcting wrong behavior or technique consistently. The best coaches I know also find ways to make that daily work visible to their athletes. That’s one reason I appreciate what platforms like Ballogy do: when kids can see their reps, their habits, and their progress tracked over time, discipline starts to feel less like a rule someone is enforcing and more like a result they’re earning. Then, in the big moments with the lights on and the crowd in the bleachers, your team will demonstrate the discipline of a well-coached team that you can be proud of.

Don’t be surprised or upset when your team acts goofy or ugly in public if you don’t hold them to high standards in private. We valued the image our team portrayed in everything we did. People will forget how many games you won, but they will never forget how you acted in a restaurant, a hotel, or during a game. Those things tend to live on in infamy. Few things felt as good as having a superintendent share an email or phone message from a hotel manager or restaurant owner about how respectful and wonderful my team had been in public. That was as big as winning at the buzzer.

Discipline won’t just happen on your team. You have to work at it and force it. Teach it in the privacy of your gym and locker room. Practice it within the walls of your school and hold them accountable. When you go out in public, or step on the floor under the lights of a heated contest, you can rest assured your team will be the most disciplined in the building. It starts with you. It takes discipline to demand discipline.