Team captains necessary???

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The people that are endorsing Captains, what is your "criteria" for naming someone a Captain.

I have seen "lead by example", "the right girls", "fits the bill", "natural Leaders", "role models", "duties", "leadership skills"...these are all just words.

If I were a player on your team, and a candidate for "Captain" what would you do to prepare me for this role, as a "Captain", and what would my responsibilities be? ?I hope you wouldn't tell me to be a "role model" and to "lead by example"....Give me something with some substance please!!

I doubt that many know what the role and responsibilities of a true "Team Captain" should be, and believe me, its shouldn't be just a title, with a few responsibilities, or someone to "call the coin flip."

 

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Lady Knights---I'm still pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. ?I really don't know what goes into being a captain. ? How 'bout your take on what's involved???

 

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Fair question Lady Knights ... the right girls are those who are always to practice on time, lead the way in drills, start drills if the coaches are busy, show character/class/sportsmanship on the field regardless of the situation, talk to/get along with everyone on the team (not the same as being best friends with everyone), treat teammates/coaches/umpires with respect, care about the team vs. individual goals first, willing to call out and/or take aside a teammate who is dogging it, willing to work with and help younger/less experienced girls, stay away from alcohol/drugs/tobacco, etc.

What did our captains actually do over and above all of that ... not that much ... yeah, things like going over ground rules, leading the drills, etc. though sometimes we let the seniors do those things too. The point is not how much they did over and above what they would do anyhow ... the point is the coaches recognizing and encouraging those kinds of behaviors on the part of everyone. Occasionally their team members would "use them" for something like going to the coaches on things ... like wearing their shorts instead of long pants at a game, or if they didn't want the coaches to call a practice the morning after a school dance or something ... and as coaches we made it a point to carefully listen to and grant those requests if we could so that it further encouraged the whole notion of team captains. This in turn led to 1 or 2 players only team meetings when something needed to be aired amongst the team ... and the captains reporting back to the coaches that everything was worked out.

Does that help?

 

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As JoeA made mention of earlier, I used alot of the stuff Jeff Janssen has out, on developing team chemistry and team leaders. ?I was going to cut and paste some of it, but it gets a little lengthy, so I will post his web site instead. ?I found most, if not all of his material to be informative, but trying to implement it while still trying to teach the X's and O's of fastpitch softball, is nearly impossible. ?I feel that if all HS coaches were on board in the process, and it was slowly implemented in a group environment, it would be an outstanding learning and developmental tool.

JEFF JANSSEN PEAK PERFORMANCE
http://www.jeffjanssen.com/coaching/index.html

 

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I totally agree with getting other coaches on board. With no success, yet, I have talked to most of the coaches at my school on starting a leadership group. I wanted to identify young athletes who were potential leaders and talk to them maybe twice a month about leadership skills. I too like Jeff Janssen's stuff. By the time they would be juniors and seniors they would be ready to lead. And yes, there are some athlete's who are just those natural leaders and don't need any help at all. But I do think it would be great to do school-wide. Once the younger players came up through the program they could continue in it as mentors.

 

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Our school team last season was told by the coach to vote on the captains and after they did the coach didn't like who they chose so she picked. Those two of course did nothing in the way of a leadership role, only flaunt their titles and use their captaincy as an excuse to bully the underclassmen. Sad,sad,sad.