Alabama State University Head Coach;
6x Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) Championships;
2014, 2016 SWAC Conference Coach of the Year;
Air Force Head Coach from 1996 to 2009;
University of Memphis Head Coach from 1991 to 1995;
1994, 1995 Great Midwest Conference Coach of the Year;
played on the USA National Volleyball Team from 1985 to 1986;
The Desire to See Your Team and Athletes Thrive!
Coach Penny Lucas-White, a highly decorated college coach, former USA Volleyball team member and professional player, states that “Volleyball is the laboratory of life!” As coaches, our goals are certainly success in the seasons ahead, but most importantly, setting up our young athletes with skills for navigating the next steps of their lives.
In this energetic, engaging and informative 30th anniversary keynote presentation at the Iowa Volleyball Coaches Clinic, Lucus-White details her own blueprint, and shares the necessary ingredients and examples of the essential considerations for Creating a Championship Culture among your team in the seasons ahead!
GEN Z Players and Digital Distractions
Just like you and your staff scout an opposing team to understand who you are facing and what their attributes are, you must similarly make an effort to understand the athletes you have been called to coach. Who are the Gen Z athletes of today? What motivates them? What works with them?
Coach Lucas-White offers her own observations and encourages an annual assessment of the players on your team.
She also talks about the age of "digital distraction" that this generation of players is deluged with as they come to her team. The amount of anxiety and distraction from multitasking with everything available online can be a lot for any person, let alone a goal-oriented athlete, to take on. Coach Lucas-White shares a distraction drill she uses to help reinforce how difficult it is to focus, to relax and to clear your mind. And then she asks coaches to keep that degree of difficulty in mind when you are coaching a new drill or trying to understand why an athlete might not be 100% all in all the time.
Why is Culture So Important? Getting the Team On Board
Coach Lucas-White details the importance of a positive team culture. The goal of every coach is to get all of your players to buy-in and to work together to reach goals. A positive culture fosters cohesion, motivation and resilience. It shapes team performance and enhances communication, trust, and accountability among your team. As Lucas-White says: "Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast!"
Lucas-White gets total team buy-in by asking every player on day one to identify what they want to experience in the season ahead. She uses their individual answers to help construct team goals that they have signed up for and created themselves.
The next step is the team writes down a series of words they want to adhere to and demonstrate daily and as a team, they come up with an all-in/total buy-in on these words and vow to commit to them together. Examples of the words are: Positive, Consistency, Intentional, Selfless, Grit, Perseverance.
The players are entrusted to embrace their choices and also, have committed to "police" themselves and make sure they and their teammates are standing firm in their dedication to this list of words that define their culture for the season. Coach Lucas-White is the "quality control" person in this dynamic and if an outlier to the agreed-upon culture has been brought to her attention, it is up to her to enforce any consequences.
Process vs. Outcome
Penny Lucas-White is an advocate for a continual growth mindset. She coaches for adherence to process vs outcome so the reinforcement is on doing the drills and technique correctly so they are practicing the correct process. She knows the outcome will benefit when it counts once the process is firmly established.
Her practices are harder than her games for that reason; and as a result, games are when the players are able to have fun, show off their refined skills and teamwork and thrive.
Coach Penny Lucas-White outlines leadership, trust and respect, what GRIT is, the Five H's exercise to facilitate a "safe space" within the team and so much more.
Being a coach of a team involves dedication, commitment, energy, knowledge, experience and leadership. Building an intentional team culture requires additional work and time.
In this video, Coach Penny Lucas-White defines excellent considerations to undertake as you consider upping your team culture commitment and she arms you with a tremendously rich and powerful set of ideas and tools to make your next season the first step towards creating an unbelievable legacy as a coach!
64 minutes. .