Team unity on a sports team is as essential to the success of the team as is the physical ability of the players themselves. Even in individual sports like track and swimming, building a community with shared commitment and common goals will not only foster a greater sense of belonging and cooperation, but will inevitably result in more involvement, effort, and enjoyment gained out of the sport itself. Building a truly united team is not just about putting a group of athletes together and telling them to win; both the athletes and the coaches are responsible for making a team what it is. Even if the coach is on the right track, if the athletes are not on the same page then it will be very hard to develop team cohesiveness. The opposite is also true. From my own personal experience, I was once on a team where the coach and the athletes were not of the same mindset. My coach was the authoritarian type; it was his way or the highway. All business. No fun. If you were talking that meant you weren’t focusing on your job and that would be dealt with by yelling and harder workouts. During my freshman year six people out of our twenty five group of sprinters quit after the first couple of months of the season. There was no sense of solidarity, nothing that could hold us together as true team because besides being united in opposition against our coach, us athletes did not feel like we had a say or sense of ownership for the team and had very little spirit or solidarity to one another or the sport itself. We were never given that chance to grow close or find enjoyment out of the sport, and I feel that this is why we never reached our full athletic potential. Building a truly unified team requires that both the coach and the athlete trust one another and work together for the betterment of the team as a whole. Coaches need to make sure that their athletes feel needed, recognized, and important. By finding different ways to elicit leadership, players will feel a greater sense of responsibility and commitment to the team and will in turn start to care about the team’s ideals and expect teammates to do the same as well. A united team that works together with a common vision and strives for the same goals will truly become a powerful force to be reckoned with and will not only find more success in their endeavors, but will have greater enjoyment along the way.
Sasha Blanchard
Social Foundations of Coaching
University of Notre Dame 2012
