Chasing Perfection: The Principles Behind Winning Football the De La Salle Way - Rilegato

Ladouceur, Bob

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1629371661 ISBN 13: 9781629371665

Casa editrice: Triumph Books, 2015

Riassunto

A coaching legend shares techniques, philosophies, and team-building exercises applicable beyond the playing field

 

In 1979, when Bob Ladouceur took over the head football coaching job at De La Salle High School, the program had never once had a winning season. By the time he stepped down in 2013 and after posting an unprecedented 399&;25&;3 record, De La Salle was regarded as one of the great dynasties in the history of high school football. In Chasing Perfection, Ladouceur shares, for the first time, the coaching philosophies he employed at De La Salle. Far more than a book on the Xs and Os of football, this resource focuses on how Ladouceur created a culture based on accountability, work ethic, humility, and commitment that made his teams greater than the sum of their parts. This book not only includes details on the nuances of the game and the techniques that made the Spartans the most celebrated high school football team in history, it also has chapters on creating what Ladouceur calls an "authentic team experience," which include lessons as valuable in a board room as in a locker room.

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Informazioni sull?autore

Bob Ladouceur was the head coach of the De La Salle high school football team for 34 years. He is one of the most successful high school football coach in the country, posting a 399&;25&;3 record, including a 151-game winning streak was the longest in the history of high school football. He was elected to the National High School Hall of Fame in 2001. He lives in San Ramon, California. Neil Hayes is the author of the bestselling When the Game Stands Tall: The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football&;s Longest Winning Streak, which was adapted into a feature film starring Jim Caviezel in 2014, and The Last Putt: Two Teams, One Dream, and a Freshman Named Tiger. He is a sports writer for the Chicago Sun Times and was named one of the nation&;s top-10 sports columnists by the Associated Press Sports Editors. He lives in Chicago.

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Chasing Perfection

The Leadership Principles Behind Winning Football The De La Salle Way

By Bob Ladouceur, Neil Hayes

Triumph Books

Copyright © 2015 Bob Ladouceur with Neil Hayes
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-62937-166-5

Contents

Foreword by John Madden, 
Introduction by Bob Ladouceur, 
De La Salle Coaching Staff, 
1. Laying the Foundation, 
2. Motivation and Team Building, 
3. Practicing, Scouting, and Gameplanning, 
4. Offense, 
5. Defense, 
6. Special Teams, 
7. Offseason Conditioning, 
8. Sports Medicine, 
About the Authors, 
Acknowledgments, 

CHAPTER 1

Laying the Foundation

The game of football is about defeating the man in front of you. Everything else plays out from there.

— Former De La Salle head coach Bob Ladouceur

I believe football is in my DNA. I understood the game from the get-go, even as a small child. I can remember back to my days growing up in suburban Detroit, Michigan, wearing a plastic Lions helmet and shoulder pads and running around the front lawn playing football. I loved it. I never lost that passion for it. In a lot of ways, I felt I was meant to do this.

I have tried to figure out why that was true for me. There were two subjects in high school that I really excelled at. One was physics, and one was geometry. The game is about physics and geometry, and I truly believe that helped and aided me throughout all those years. The only math class I ever excelled in in high school was geometry. It was easy for me. In every other mass class, I struggled. Geometry was the only science class I excelled in was physics. I just understood leverage, how to move mass, and things like that. I really think there's a strong connection between those two subjects and the game of football.

I have always been able to see where defenses are vulnerable and how you can layer a defense. I've always understood the angles and steps required to properly execute a trap block, when a quarterback should throw and at what angle, and the physics and body position involved to move a guy bigger than you.

Know the Game

I was fortunate to have great high school coaches in Fred Houston and Pete Villa. I had great college coaches in Daryll Rogers and Dick Mannini. These guys taught the game well. I understood the game. I understood how the pieces fit together. I wasn't a great player in college. I was a good player in high school and in college I was a role guy. I played special teams. I played offense until I had two knee surgeries, and then they switched me to defense. I was willing to make the transition. I backed up guys and I learned. So at 24 when they put me in charge of this program, I thought, I know this game. I can teach these kids something.

That's what carried me when I started. I had a good working knowledge of the game and I could tell what was working, what wasn't, why our defensive line was playing poorly, why our offensive line was blocking so well, why our receivers could or could not run a good route. I understood it all. I had no experience, but that first year in 1979, those kids looked at me and said, "This guy knows something about this game." They felt like I could teach them something and they liked that. They trusted me and gave me the benefit of the doubt as I fumbled through my early years.

Because I was a running back before being a defensive back at San Jose State, I knew the running back and quarterback positions. I knew all the defensive back positions and I knew some stuff about linebackers. I was less sure about the offensive and defensive lines, the receivers, and special teams, but as I went on, I schooled myself until I felt like I could coach every position on the field.

We had a great offensive line coach in Steve Alexakos, and the technique we currently use was his idea. He left in 1992 to coach at San Jose State. I loved what he was doing, so before I took over his spot as offensive line coach, I worked with him for two weeks. I knew a lot about what he was doing after working with him for three years and calling the offense and watching his guys work, but I wanted to know the minutiae and the methodology of what he was teaching. He was a good teacher. He taught me everything, and for the next 10 years, I personally coached the offensive line. I felt really shaky going into it that first year, but I got used to it, and that stretch of coaching was the most rewarding and most fun I ever had. A head coach should be able to step in for any position coach, and that group should not miss a beat.

There's an adage that Alexakos used: you have to inspect what you expect. You have to know when things are breaking down and why they're breaking down if you're a head coach. You have to know it all down to the minute details. A good coach has to know exactly what he's looking for and what his expectations are. There's a lot kids don't know, but they do know whether you know the game. You can't fake it. You can't fool them. They will respect you and listen to you if you know what you're talking about and they appreciate it most when you work with them to correct their bad habits and reinforce their positive ones. They think, This guy wants me to be a better player and he's working with me to do it. I'll give him the effort.

The Game Remains the Same

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the game is always the same. It will never change. No matter what offense you're running, it's always going to boil down to old-school building blocks. Can you block? Can you tackle? Can you run? Can you get off blocks? Can you get your guys in the right spots?

That's exactly what we work on. We pour all our energy into technique and developing our players. We teach our kids how to get off blocks every day in practice. I tell my linebackers, "I never want to hear you say you got blocked. They are going to send guys to block you. The key is to defeat that block and make the hit. You're an inside linebacker. That's your job. Defeat the block and make the tackle."

We teach them how to do that. There's a technique to it. We drill it every day. Strike, get off your block, fill your gap. If the ball goes the other way, cross his face, gap exchange back the other way. Whatever you do, don't run around the block. Then we watch film on Saturday and say, "Your head was on the wrong side when that guy was blocking you. Now you're cut off. You just wrecked the integrity of the defense. Now that tackle has a free release into our linebacker" or "This is why you got cut off, you knucklehead, you stepped with the wrong foot." Those are the things we concentrate on. Those are the things we're constantly correcting. The stuff we do is simple. Nothing we do is complex. We're high school football coaches, but our emphasis is on technique.

Everybody wants to be a success. I've never heard anyone say he or she wants to be a failure. No matter what their definition of success might be — and it's different for everybody — everybody wants to be successful. People often ask me the secret to my success. I'm always baffled by that because there is no secret. I tell that to our players: "We're going to go out and play this big game tomorrow night. We can't sprinkle you with fairy dust. This is going to be your gig. You have to earn it and work for it."

For us, for me, our foundation for success is grueling, nose-to-the-grindstone, monotonous, tedious work and trying to get the fundamentals and the foundation right. It requires a ton of conditioning, weight training, and preparation. And once you get into practice, it's drilling and re-drilling ad nauseam to the point of boredom. I feel brain-dead after practices. There's no way around that. No matter what your system is, there has to be a foundation of technique and fundamentals. That's what the game requires. There's no way to get that unless you drill, and that's hard, physically and mentally exhausting work.

It's Not About You

I had 399 wins when I stepped down as head coach. Everybody wanted to know why I didn't stick around for a milestone 400 win. The truth is, I never considered it. What difference would one more win make? I guess that number has a strange significance to some, but to me, it was fitting because coaching was never about wins or numbers. I didn't announce my plans to step down until after the season because I didn't want my last year to become some cheesy motivational ploy for the players or to draw media attention.

Coaches often preach the importance of teamwork, selflessness, humility, sincerity, and accountability, but it starts with them. If a coach doesn't exemplify those traits, his players never will.

How much do you care about people? What are we here for?

People ask me all the time why I didn't go on to coach in college or the pros. I never got rich working at De La Salle, that's for sure, but I never tried to be a college or pro coach because that's not why I got into it. I always wanted to work with kids. There's a special innocence to kids and a thirst to become somebody — even if they're not sure what. Our former players who have gone on to play in college or in the NFL always come back and say the same thing: "It's not the same. This is where I had the most fun. This is where it all meant the most."

That's because the high school years are a special period in a person's life. Young adults make dramatic changes between the ages of 14 and 18 both physically and emotionally, and they need good people around them to work with them and guide them, good people to listen and nudge them in the right direction.

I wanted to use football as a way of making a difference, a way of helping kids grow up so when they graduate from De La Salle they can step into a job as a fully functioning member of a dynamic community. That's what I thought my job was and still do — to prepare these guys so they can go out in the world and raise families, be successful, be happy. The bottom line for a healthy team or a healthy company is a question: how much do you really care about other people? How much do they matter? That's important.

Hiring a Staff

One of the best things I ever learned as a leader is to hire talented coaches who knew what they were doing. It sounds obvious, but you need to hire people who are strong where you are weak. My longtime assistant, Terry Eidson, is an extrovert. I'm an introvert. Our personalities are totally different, but our values and the way we approach the game are identical. That's why we were such a great tandem for 32 years. We disagree on a lot of things but not on the important things.

I never micromanaged my coaches or stood over them and told them what they have to do. I found out if they could do it or not by observing them, listening to them, and watching them with kids. If they could do it, I got out of their way and didn't bother them. I helped mentor people, but once they started to work, I left them alone. I just never did their jobs for them. That's emasculating. I wasn't always 100 percent sure what Terry was doing half the time because I trusted him implicitly and knew he was going to do a great job.

I liked to solicit input from my entire staff. Whenever I made a decision, especially concerning a kid, I always asked everybody's opinion. I always felt six heads were better than one. Somebody might have a better idea than I. A lot of times they did, and I'd go with their recommendation. Then we'd vote on it. Ninety percent of the time it turned out how I wanted it to turn out, but everyone had a say; everyone was invested. I want everyone to believe this is our team and not just my team.

It's also my personality type. I always preferred to make decisions as a group and call it a group decision. It's just smart. Being in a management or leadership position, you want to get people's thoughts and ideas and include them in the process. Otherwise, morale goes through the floor.

Create a Mission Statement

This step is important because it's a great guide for a coach, and it reminds you that you're an educator first and that there's an overall philosophy that's bigger than your program or the game that you must adhere to. Everything you do should emanate from your mission statement.

I adopted the mission statements for both the school as a whole and the athletic department because they aligned seamlessly with my values. I didn't want my mission statement to be separate from the school because I think of football as an extracurricular activity with the ultimate goal being to teach kids something other than just the skills of the game. I always wanted to aim higher than that. Your mission statement boils down to what you believe in as an educator and a person.

Are you about winning football games or about finding teachable moments, maintaining perspective, and shaping character? Here's what I came up with:

DE LA SALLE ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT MISSION STATEMENT

The athletic department, guided by traditions of the Brothers of the Christian Schools and the charism of Saint John Baptist de La Salle, founder of the Brothers and Patron of Teachers, is committed to providing a well-rounded program that is not only physically challenging but one that further promotes the spiritual academic values of Saint John Baptist de La Salle.

The athletic department recognizes and fosters the development of commitment, brotherhood, sportsmanship, instills in all student-athletes a sense of pride and achievement, and seeks to create an environment in which all student-athletes develop a sense of self-esteem and dignity in a Christian setting that is both moral and caring.

DE LA SALLE HIGH SCHOOL MISSION STATEMENT

De La Salle High School is a Roman Catholic educational community where students are loved, instructed, and guided according to the traditions of the Brothers of the Christian Schools and the charism of Saint John Baptist de La Salle, founder of the Brothers and Patron of Teachers.

De La Salle High School provides a Catholic, Lasallian education rooted in liberal arts tradition, which prepares young people for life and college. The school seeks to educate students spiritually, academically, physically, and socially through the promotion of a vital faith life, sponsorship of strong academic programs, a wide range of student activities, and the witness of a concerned and dedicated faculty, administration and staff.

De La Salle High School recognizes and promotes the dignity of each student by providing an environment that is moral, caring, and joyful. Within such a setting, the school seeks to challenge its students and serve others, especially the poor, and to deepen a sense of responsibility for humanity's future.

De La Salle High School seeks to serve and embrace students with varied academic needs and diverse social, cultural, and economic backgrounds and does so in partnership with families and all those who are committed to living the Lasallian heritage.

» THE HANDBOOK

I had already been coaching for a decade when I began compiling a coaches' handbook out of necessity. I started to see things happening that I didn't want happening, like coaches coming to practice in ratty jeans or flip-flops. That wasn't how I wanted to approach coaching. Kids are aware of everything. First impressions are important. I wanted to make it clear that the expectations for coaches were the same as for a teacher in a classroom. It just so happens our classroom is a football field.

The handbook I created pertains to coaches on all levels. It is literally our Bible and what we go by. We don't have it at practice in our back pockets and we don't look at it all the time because we know it by heart. This is how we operate.

I. PHILOSOPHY

It is the responsibility of De La Salle football coaches to:

1. Know and adhere to the school's mission statement, philosophy, and school rules.

2. Be an educator first.

3. Promote an education-first philosophy and guide players to become responsible students.

4. Be examples and role models to players and the community.

5. Teach students how to be responsible members of an athletic team.

6. Teach students to play the game of football.

7. Strive to make the game of football fun.

II. PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES

1. To dress like a professional

a. Practice attire — shorts, sweats, tee, or collared shirt. All clothing should be clean and with no holes or rips. School colors are preferred.

b. Gameday — slacks (no jeans), shirts with collars, school hats.

c. Clean shaven or hair and beards trimmed.

d. No tobacco use around students on or off the field.

e. No drinking or gambling around students on or off the field.

III. COACH-PLAYER RELATIONSHIPS

It is the responsibility of De La Salle football coaches to:

1. Never swear or rage at a player.

2. Know the team rules and goals and enforce the rules consistently and uniformly.

3. Adhere to your own team rules (i.e. being on time.

4. Know players off the field. Be informed about academic life and be informed about home life as much as possible.

5. Never play an injured player. Be able to recognize injuries and administer first aid. Clear all injured or potentially concussed players through a trainer before returning them to the game.

6. Never punish players with physical conditioning.

7. Never physically handle, push, shove, or grab a player.

8. Discipline to be administered as follows:

• A player will not practice.

• A player will not start a game.

• A player will not play in a game.

• A player will not suit up for a game.

• A player will turn in his gear.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Chasing Perfection by Bob Ladouceur, Neil Hayes. Copyright © 2015 Bob Ladouceur with Neil Hayes. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Triumph Books
• Data di pubblicazione: 2015
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1629371661
• ISBN 13: 9781629371665
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 221
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
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