Pudlugger
09-28-2003, 09:03 AM
Last month before week zero I started a thread on which was more effective in motivating a team: Discipline or emotion. I have noticed that there is a continuim from highly emotional teams all the way across to very disciplined and methodical teams. Two teams that exemplify these opposites that I have watched play would be Marlin and Sealy. Marlin players appear to respond to a lot of motivational activities, like the group dancing on the center of the field before the National Anthem and high fiving celebrations after good hits etc. while Sealy just methodically grinds away against opponents keeping mistakes to a minimum. This reflects coaching philosophy. For Marlin it worked when La Grange met them for the big play-off re-match last year as they intercepted a pass and ran it in on the second play and just never lost momentum. However the next week they went in flat against Bellville and lost in 3 OTs in a game most people feel they should have won. Now Marlin is getting beat up by teams that are out of their league and are emotionally flat. Burnet sounds like the model team for discipline. They work hard on their individual assignments and game plan and just methodically and systematically dismantle the opposition. I think that this issue is an important one in football because it has to do with how a young man manages life's challenges. I for one, think a team should be weighted over towards the discipline side but not all the way. Let the players express themselves a little as long as it is not offensive or results in penalties or causes loss of focus, and get the job done consistantly. If you have cohesiveness in your team you will win more games, and I feel, in most cases, this is achieved more readily through discipline rather than emotion. La Grange has a large number of younger players this season who are right now developing this discipline and you can see it in their play. I think that is why it takes La Grange a couple of games to come together as a team and start winning decisively. Emotional teams can be explosive and if they get sparked they will run you over like Marlin did to Ennis and La Grange last year, but consistancy is a problem because what goes up also comes down , especially emotions. To beat a good team that has more talent, but relies on emotion, it is important to strike early and knock the crud out of them thereby deflating them, and then methodically put them away. Is that what happened in Burnet Friday night? Sounds like it to me. Just my thoughts, what do you think?