GROW THE GAME CONTEST #3 – 2/14/2015

Grow the Game Contest #3 will be announced VALENTINE’S DAY

WHAT ONE SINGLE THING, WHAT IT DO ALL GREAT TEAMS SHARE?

What one quality, aspect, or trait that you think is always a cornerstone for all teams worthy of the highest admiration and dare I say the designation of greatness. This does not have to be a lacrosse team, but I do like sports best (still). Keep in mind that every team is different, and so too is every (annual) season. This is not a list of dynasties. This is not comma, and, and, but, but either. NO. This is how succinctly can you describe IT? We all know the potential of IT once you actually have a little IT, and also how fragile IT can be. Cramming as many things into the answer as you possibly can isn’t going to be IT either. Having some IT gives team the power of choice, doesn’t IT?

Here is the question. We are building it so you can put in the answers starting Sunday. Winner announced on 2/22/2015, next Sunday. We will announce the prize by Monday. It will be a head and pocket.

Please use 75 words or less to answer the following question. Winner gets blabla

75 words or less = JUST ONE or two sentences. Less will be more. The winner can bank on it. Here is the question. Put answers in the ‘COMMENT’ section below (once we get it set up) and all the answers will stay posted @ the Rock-it Pocket “www”. Follow the directions for best contest results…..
GROW THE GAME CONTEST #3 – QUESTION:

So, come on people, light my (sometimes dim) coaching path with your sound structure, or your intellectual blueprint, or even your spiritual brilliance. I don’t think that IT fits in a bottle, but I do think that everyone has a big or small vision of the mold styles that can or do shape IT. I must admit that I already know what my IT answer might be today, but I can’t win the contest, right? Perhaps you will have an impact on what I will think or feel about all of IT by next Sunday.

———————————- CONTEST #2 ———————————- THE WINNER of the Rock-it Pocket “Grow-the-game” contest and the Brine Clutch XSL with Rock-it Pocket is: DAN TISINGER, and these are his THREE winning WORDS that fit HIS perfect teammate: ASSURED BROTHER-IN-ARMS COURAGE Congratulations Dan and call Rock-it Pocket at 800-374-SHOT (7468). (7468=s-h-o-t, circa 1987). All the entries and more of a breakdown is posted @ /grow-game-contest-2/ The “Grow the Game” contest #2 at Rock-it Pocket was for entries to have three words. The object is to choose the “perfect” TEAMMATE with those three words. The winner gets the Brine Clutch XSL pictured on the Rock-it Pocket web site. The colors make it an appropriate Dean Smith (Carolina blue) tribute for this day. Grow the game is not just numbers. It is a great game way before we got here. The format/layout for contest #2 (TEAMMATE) seemed to sort of set itself up for a democratic process of finding the winner, like some sort of a vote. I could almost see the dangling chards (sic). Numbers seemed like the logical answer on how to break it all down. So I started to lay it out with the intention of choosing a winner based on something like the three most used words, and there were not quite 100 entries, but there was a decent sample size. So, if more than one person had all three top words thought I, well then, I didn’t get that far, but my thought was some sort of a tie breaker if more than one had all 3 of the most used words on their “ballot”, and truth be known I do not know if any of the ballots do have the three most used words, but they are all listed as groups below. Exqueeze me, but why is “good hair” on a few ballots right next to actual words that had thought behind them? If you wanted good hair, you would never have wanted me as a teammate, and I think I was a pretty damn good one. Here is the tally of words. I took the liberty of putting words together because they express what I consider to belong together, you know, like teammates. Please do not go back, count, and tell me I got this wrong. Just keep it to yourself. My arithmetic has ADD. No, I mean A.D.D.       I grouped a couple together because even though they are different words, I think they express the same sentiment for this.
1)         Selfless, Humble. Unselfish            <><><><><><><><> 22
2)         Dedicated, Diligent, committed         <><><><><><><><> 19
3)         Passion, love                          <><><><><><><><> 14
4)         Responsible, Reliable                  <><><><><><><><> 11
5)         Playmaker, Good                        <><><><><><><><> 9
6)         Smart, Lax IQ, level headed            <><><><><><><><> 5
7)         Heart                                  <><><><><><><><> 8
* Several other words were expressed more than once. Maybe I am just attracted to uniqueness, BEATLEJUICE! But literally at almost the end of the day (ballot counting) I was totally “struck” by a late one, and what Dan Tisinger put down. He didn’t use ANY (none) of the most used words, and I am pretty sure that only he, Dan used two of his words. The other one he used in sort of a special way (brother-in-arms), using the hyphen as a life line to stretch it out. ASSURED  (Body language and confidence in one¹s own abilities speak loudly) BROTHER-IN-ARMS  (No ONE is left behind because we are in ARMS. Family built) COURAGE  (not overcome by fear) I think if you have all three of these qualities in your water, that many will be free to trickle into a much bigger “stream” of all that stuff (words) up there, and you would be a damn good teammate. What do you think?             (Ended 02-08-14) At Rock-it Pocket we have been part of the game of lacrosse growing for a long time. Passion has been so key to the growth of lacrosse. People just fall in love with the game, and that often loois like Cupid armed with some kind of lighting bolt because it just happens so quickly and the ‘distraction’ is so intense. Enter for a a chance to win this Clutch XSL, details below.   Players come in all different sizes, ages, skill capabilities, and preferences. We have tried to be the “Stick Guys” for a long time by trying to help players to find/obtain the stick that works best for them and the playing style they embody. At Rock-it Pocket we want to hopefully add a new wrinkle or two here or there in 2015 in ways that help in a grow-the-game kind of way.”     Here is this: – THREE SINGLE WORDS – WHAT DO YOU WISH FOR IN A TEAMMATE? Choose three single words to answer the question in the comment section. 1) 2) 3) You do not have to be a player or be on a team. You could be a coach or somebody¹s aunt. It is not limited that way. We are promoting function in the team family. We believe that is a big part of the path to that other thing we like so well. What is that..? oh yeah, winning. There is no need to either rate or depth-chart the words you choose because you were ALL granted ALL 3 wishes, not just one or one at a time. The power potential of 3 is far greater than that of just one, so layering one above another might not help, and, in fact might be a distraction when thinking of bigger pictures. No sentences please, just words. Any kind of word is contest-acceptable, It can be a noun, adjective, adverb, verb. You can play with wordage, but be careful if you go there. You can make up names as if you were playing scrabble at the hospital right before the birth of a child. However, I am imposing a two-hyphen-limit to any word, and again, I doubt if you will win using all 6 available hyphen-lines. Word of warning: Do not cheapen the language, but do have fun with it. Maybe we can all learn a little stuff that can help grow the game. English only, EH?” Answer in the COMMENT section below! Deadline is Saturday 4:00pm MT – Winner posted on Sunday. ef=”/media/CDB-478.jpg”>              

PICTURE HERE –

Below (?) is the first ROCK-IT POCKET GROW THE GAME CONTEST

COACH

GROW THE GAME CONTEST #1
1/11/2015 Answer with ONE SENTENCE ONLY, long or short. • Here is the Question:           WHAT MAKES A GREAT COACH? The Winner is: Wait, not so fast my friends: There were many that we liked. So here is the “honorable Mention” list: Alan B. Miranda Jon Maxwell Leah McCleery Shrinivas Reid Perry Brody Jimerson Connor Bell – It was not an actual sentence, but we like the concept of “Less yelling at games”. Eric A. Wendt Sr. Hugh Barber David Miller The final 3 were: Kevin Henry Thomas Rea Matt Ellinghaus I had to pick one. Matt, I loved it, but the grammar, not so much. The winner is Thomas Rea. Thomas, your sentence was impeccable as were your thoughts. You didn’t mention team, but then neither did I… Thomas Rea - A great coach is one who understands the individuality of each player and combines those characteristics in order to form the best environment for players to thrive within. KEEP IT SIMPLE for I am STUPID – KISS Contest rules state (or they soon will) that Indeed it is okay to make THE sentence long or short. I tried not to be prejudicial in any way about that. However, grammar and spelling DO count here, because I am THAT guy, and also MORE (words) is not always more better, and it doesn’t matter how many commas and colons get into your writing game, three or four hundred words is not a sentence. In my library of anything, that is at least a full-blown short story. I was also somewhat surprised by the number of people that could not write, and I claim no expertise my own self, a correct, complete, clean sentence, but we do live in the text age after all. Seems like a damn shame. Of course 2 or more sentences of an answer would be, well, TOO many, too, so we lost a few down that grammar run-on road. People, this is how one spells losing, l-o-s-i-n-g, or l-o-s-e. It is not spelled loose, but I see it every single day. I can’t still spell worth a damn, but Word can….It (English) was once a great language. Word! LOVE POTION #9 We strongly believe that there is more than one way to be a great coach. We do not pretend to own any kind of definition or secret potion for making or being a “Great Coach”. Beyond that, the most perfect world would still have some imperfect parts, and coaching equations can truly only be evolution from the inside out. TEACHING IS ONE WORD – LEARNING IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ONE Here are a few things (is it just me?). I am big on body language and phraseology. I prefer the concept of a great coaching/learning environment, rather more than ‘teaching’ them this or ‘educating’ them about that. There must be a FIELD OF DREAMS where learning can happen. It is a big picture, the team, and at the end of the practice day does it really matter whom or even what ‘taught’ them or one of them something? No, it matters what they learn, one or more, and how that feeds the team dynamic. If a coach gets caught up more in their personal part of the teaching process than he does with the passion for ‘big’ team or individual learning, then that can easily take a team along the less-than-efficient route to improving every day methinks. I suppose this word use technicality/delineation denied a few in this contest #1. You will have another shot at the goal. Some answers that came in had the word ‘learn’ and ‘learn from’ and things like that, and that seems good, but I admit that I was surprised that only a very few of the answers used the word listen as integral to one sentence on great coaching. Actually, disappointed might be a more correct description of how that hit me. I fully encourage a team or person acting in a manner that would be characterized as gracious. At its simplest, ‘polite’ and ‘tactful’ are good ways to be, not only after you lose, but all the time, and when you are OUT and about with a group they have impact on public life, and in a way just as much as ‘after a defeat’. Everyone says it is not all about winning and losing, but then, there it is, sOOOOO exactly that. What I mandate most is good leadership and very open lines. Cristine Morrison wrote this and it is two sentences (=X), and it is very typical of the thoughts sent in. “A great coach , is someone who can inspire, lead , educate, and motivate their team. Yet someone who is also strong enough to grow with and learn from their team and also take defeats gracefully. Christine, you had for me for the entire first sentence, but the second with “take defeats gracefully” sent me out the door. Graceful, gracious in defeat and those thoughts with that word kept showing up in my reading all these comments. I assume this is the positive coaching directive in many how-to-coach books. The more it (acting gracefully) came up, the more I thought about it. I looked it up. First of all, a great coach (in my humble opinion) addresses his/her team almost daily about how to act in many different places and times of day for that matter. Who does this team want to be? Who are we? The talk needs to begin on DAY ONE and just continue forever. Certain things need to be done certain ways with this team, and that, in my opinion, goes far beyond how a team acts when they lose AND when they win. It is WHO you are not a face that you put on. I think I spent MOST all of my yell-at-the-ref time preaching to the team, so maybe that gave me a head start. All situations need to be prepared for, not just the losing part, though, and I am so sorry, but it does not matter how old or what gender they are. So, what is gracious? This is kind of conglomerate of a couple random sources; Gracious – It is an adjective 1)    full of tact, kindness, and politeness 2)    condescendingly indulgent to perceived inferiors 3)    Luxurious or elegant 4)    Displaying divine grace, mercy, or compassion. 1 courteous, kind, and pleasant : smiling and gracious in defeat. • pleasantly indulgent, esp. toward an inferior. • elegant and tasteful, esp. as exhibiting wealth or high social status Sorry, I do not mandate the/my word. We all learn together how to accept whatever, but we will find the appropriate adjective for our acting action together. You know, like a team. Getting ‘right’ is not always simple no doubt. I talk as a coach about appropriate behavior and situations for different ways to be starting day one at practice no matter what level. It is part of seeking our team identity. We show ourselves as a team by how we act when we lose, when we win, or even how we act getting in and out of elevators on the road or at the local Burger King or whatever. There is no rule specific to how to act when you lose. It is important that as a team they act appropriately in whatever circumstances. Great coaches do not need to tell their team to act gracious in defeat.