Army Crew Team Recommendations to Coach Preczewski
Coach Preczewski, Head Coach of the United States Military Academy Crew Team faced the toughest decision of his coaching career just 4 days before the National Championship races. He struggled with team leadership, cohesiveness, and teamwork from his athletes. With his Varsity team consistently being defeated by the Junior Varsity team in races and practices, he knew that something was not right. He had done many objective tests that were supposed to tell him who was physically the best on the team, but still the problem remained. He began weigh different options, but a decision was needed with such short time remaining before the Championships. One of Coach P’s options was to switch …show more content…
He knew that this had upset some of the junior varsity members who did not want to be moved up. When this was done previously, the Junior Varsity boat performed at an even higher level as the Varsity members brought down wanted to show that they did not belong on JV and in fact were better rowers. Because of this, Coach P could see that the problem would be worse for the Varsity team, but actually strengthened the Junior Varsity team. This was an option that could be implemented, but not without pushback from Junior Varsity team members. The final option Coach Preczewski had was to intervene to improve the Varsity boat’s performance. Coach was not sure how he would go about intervening, but decided to start with a team meeting with the Varsity team to see if they were willing to take his feedback and work with him to resolve their issues and move forward as a much better team. The meeting took place, and did not go very well. Instead of members agreeing on what the problem was and working together to find solutions, they argued and placed blame on others and took credit personally for the little successes they had. This left Coach P with a very hard decision to
Coach Preczewski, Head Coach of the United States Military Academy Crew Team faced the toughest decision of his coaching career just 4 days before the National Championship races. He struggled with team leadership, cohesiveness, and teamwork from his athletes. With his Varsity team consistently being defeated by the Junior Varsity team in races and practices, he knew that something was not right. He had done many objective tests that were supposed to tell him who was physically the best on the team, but still the problem remained. He began weigh different options, but a decision was needed with such short time remaining before the Championships. One of Coach P’s options was to switch …show more content…
He knew that this had upset some of the junior varsity members who did not want to be moved up. When this was done previously, the Junior Varsity boat performed at an even higher level as the Varsity members brought down wanted to show that they did not belong on JV and in fact were better rowers. Because of this, Coach P could see that the problem would be worse for the Varsity team, but actually strengthened the Junior Varsity team. This was an option that could be implemented, but not without pushback from Junior Varsity team members. The final option Coach Preczewski had was to intervene to improve the Varsity boat’s performance. Coach was not sure how he would go about intervening, but decided to start with a team meeting with the Varsity team to see if they were willing to take his feedback and work with him to resolve their issues and move forward as a much better team. The meeting took place, and did not go very well. Instead of members agreeing on what the problem was and working together to find solutions, they argued and placed blame on others and took credit personally for the little successes they had. This left Coach P with a very hard decision to