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Papaya Rules: A tale of Friendship, Rivalry, and Mclaren Team Orders
McLaren’s Lando Norris now leads the Formula 1 World Drivers Championship by one point, following a dominant run at the Mexican Grand Prix. McLaren has dominated much of the season, winning 13 races and clinching the Constructors’ Championship in Singapore. With only four races remaining, McLaren drivers Lando Norris and […]
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Straw, Sticks, or Bricks?
You can tell a lot about an organization’s culture or an individual’s character by how they handle setbacks. There are two paths to go down, acceptance or denial. Setbacks are inevitable. We know this. Lately, it seems that they are coming at us more frequently and with more incredible velocity. […]
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Out With the Old, In With the New?
If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get the results you’ve always got. Sometimes, that’s great, when your past results are winning. How long should leaders stay in their position of power? Some very successful coaches and leaders have had very lengthy stays in their positions: Bill Belichick, John […]
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The NCAA and the Winds of Change
The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is in full swing, and teams are jockeying for this year’s championship trophy. The tournament is both a cultural staple, with millions of Americans filling out brackets each year, and a massive revenue source for the NCAA, top universities, and bettors. In 2019, March Madness […]
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Today Is a New Day
As a leader and coach, I have always gone to bed always thinking about what I could do better for the athletes, team, or the people that I lead. I always try think of ways that I can help others on our team, help shed problems that a member of […]
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Despite Disparities, the Women Have Got Next
This week, three of the best known women’s college basketball coaches in the history of the game, made unprecedented public statements about inequitable treatment involving the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament. Culture in Sports’ own Jeremy Piasecki reported on this last week. https://cultureinsports.com/it-only-becomes-equal-ish-when-it-gets-too-loud/ South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, Stanford’s Tara Vanderveer, who […]
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We Need a Culture of Consistency in Believing
How do you feel about athlete abuse? How do you feel about athlete abuse when it’s in your sport? Is it still abuse? How do you feel about athlete abuse when it’s by your friend? Is it out of character? Loyalty to sport and people we know and/or admire is […]
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It Is Just a Game
It is just a game. No, I am not belittling or discounting any of the hard work that athletes, coaches, and staff put into competing. But I am talking about what people do after their team loses. Some coaches will yell at their team, others will blame the officials. Some […]
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How High: McDermott Sets the Bar
Not many athletes use the psychological tactic of a ‘rating system’ as a means of performance enhancement, in fact according to coach Matt Horsnell, most competitive athletes would find the system has the other effect on them. Australian high-jumper Nicola McDermott, however, calmly dissects her performance into different categories and […]
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Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to Judge Cowboys
If you are of a certain age and enjoy country music at all, you immediately recognize the lyrics to Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys. Ed and Patsy Bruce wrote this song in 1975, but Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson made it famous in 1978. It […]
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It Only Becomes Equal-ish When It Gets Too Loud
March Madness brings out the best and worst. The best being athletes and teams coming together and excelling on the court, with some extremely low-ranking teams going deep into the tournament. You never know what the NCAA basketball tournaments will bring every year. And yes, I said tournaments. There is […]
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Lee Westwood and His “Secret Weapon”
One of the most talked-about names in golf recently has been somebody that most have not heard of, his name is Lee Westwood. Westwood is a 47-year-old Professional Golfer who has been in contention to win two of the last PGA events; the Arnold Palmer Classic and the Players Championship […]
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‘Perfection’ Belongs in the Dictionary and Not in Training Sets
Far too often I witness, in training sets for swimmers, instructions along the lines of ‘ … swim the whole of this section with ‘perfect’ turns or ‘perfect’ form’ and as I make my daily scroll through my social media feeds it is generally awash with various organisations boasting that […]
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It’s Time to Level Up
Athletes understand the importance of challenging themselves to reach the next level. Yet, the organizations that support them are stuck in complacency. As a sports fan, I continue to be amazed by the athletes in the events I watch. Whether the competition is amateur or professional, individual or team, local, […]
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What is Your Why?
In January of 2021 Ryan Smith, the new owner of the Utah Jazz announced that for every Jazz win, they would award a 4-year full ride scholarship to a Utah high school senior to attend a Utah University. They have since awarded 30 scholarships and the Jazz have risen to […]
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The Weighty Issue of Corruption
“Wherever there is power, greed, and money, there is corruption.” ― Ken Poirot Media coverage and money have turned sport into a ‘life-and-death’ situation where cheating to get ahead becomes more and more attractive. Cheating in sport has become an artform of creative innovation, intricately designed schema hell-bent on securing ‘a […]
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Is It I or We?
When you start a sentence about your team, do you start with an I or we? But let me ask two further questions: When you are speaking about your team’s successes, do you say that we (As in all coaches and athletes) have made it this far, or do you […]
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Collision Course- Collegiate Athletics & Campus Sexual Assault- Challenges in Recognition
Two American universities were caught up in the same crisis over the last few weeks, that itself is unusual. Louisiana State University (LSU) released a report by the law firm Husch Blackwell reviewing shortcomings in LSU’s reporting and management of sexual assaults related to its intercollegiate athletics program. As a […]
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The Standards and Ethics of Leaders in Sport
The Telegraph Sports Book of the Year 2019 – Sevens Heaven by Ben Ryan – chronicles the ups and downs of a coach who moved his life to the other side of the world to coach some of the most gifted athletes, the Fiji Men’s 7’s team. Without doubt some […]
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Sport: A Platform for Advocacy
The influence of top athletes; their ability to amplify important debate allows advocacy on a global level. Sport is unique in that it can bring together people of different cultural backgrounds; different nationalities; different religions to become global citizens. Imagine having such a platform on which to stage a campaign […]
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Stamping Out Intolerance
In just a few short weeks, on April 15th, Major League Baseball will celebrate the 74th anniversary of Jack Roosevelt Robinson’s debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The man, better known as Jackie Robinson, was the first African American to play baseball in the Major Leagues when he started at first […]
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Are We Rooting For Laundry?
“The sea was angry that day, my friends.” Suppose you are, like me, a Seinfeld fan. In that case, you immediately recall this line and remember George Costanza’s speech at the diner explaining how he overcame his fears and saved the whale by extracting Kramer’s golf ball from its blowhole. […]
