Greg McMullen

Alain Bernard and coach Denis Auguin

I recently received a series of text messages from a former swimmer. I had only coached this athlete for two high school seasons and not only did he have an impact on my life, but these messages clearly showed that I had an impact on his as well.

Hey Coach Greg! I just wanted to shoot you a quick text here. I just wanted to let you know how grateful I was to have had you as my head coach senior year. I know this might be a little late, but my family and I were discussing swim season and I was describing my senior season to them and out of all the sports and coaches I have had you were the most inspiring to me. You inspired a goof of a kid with some talent to put his mind and will to a sport and team and I will always appreciate that. You taught me valuable life lessons that I will carry for the rest of my life…senior year was such a blast and seeing you behind us not only as a coach but as friends too meant a lot to me. Seeing you get emotional at conference truly I feel was the moment that defined you as a coach. Emotional, yet reserved and fully supportive of everybody on the team. Not just varsity, but also JV. Even if you may have some things you would’ve changed or done differently if you had a second chance, just know that I wouldn’t have changed a single thing. That season, that team was the best of my high school career. You believed in me when other coaches didn’t, and sometimes that’s all someone really needs is someones belief in them. The only thing I might have changed is to have you as my coach for my whole high school career (haha). I just thought I should give a long deserved thanks from me to you Coach Greg. I hope that you have luck in coaching because you’re one damn good coach.

Comments like this help solidify my place on a pool deck and make the time and sacrifices worth while. Who have you heard from and what have they said to make what you do mean even more?

The other day, I finally decided to weigh myself. I weighed in at 194.4lbs. New goal, weigh in the 180′s before August 11.

The immediate question on my mind is not, “why don’t I take better care of myself.” Rather it’s “why is it coaches seem to take better care of their athletes than themselves.” Maybe I’m wrong, but I would love for others to chime in.

So I want to reach out to all gathering ideas on the subject and how we can change our actions to better portray the things we teach.

Edit: The “ideal body weight” for my height (6’0″) is 140 – 184lbs.

It’s simple, Coaches and athletes have to have goals. However, you have to make sure that the athletes and coaching staff buy into those goals and are all on the same page too. How do you do that? How does it work? What does it look like before/during/after? Well, this season was all about that.

This season was a different monster; it was something I wasn’t quite ready for. I was responsible for practice development, discipline and general team maintenance. It was new and I was afraid of it, but I know that it helped me grow further than I thought possible in 5 months.

Meeting Challenges with Open Arms

Ask anyone around me, I was nervous (looking back on it, I still am). However, I knew that with hard work, dedication, research and a little luck our season would be a success.

The very first challenge I had to overcome was the fear of practice development and drafting meet lineups. This wasn’t an easy task by any means. For me, practice development takes a very long time. I’ve taken some advice from Glenn Mills from GoSwim.TV and GoSwimTV.com in regards to “write practices you would want to swim” and integrated that into my practice writing. My goal was to create challenging sets mentally and physically – mix it up and make them think about what they were swimming, instead of just doing it.

Gaining Respect and Faith in Leadership

While I say that practice development was the biggest challenge, I also knew that gaining respect would be difficult. Luckily, I worked with most of these athletes in the previous year. Consistency in a coaching staff created a very solid foundation with the athletes in our program. (It also helps to come from the former head coaches “tree”)

For some, it took weeks to buy into the program direction. However by mid December, after the Marion County Championship Meet, it seemed like people had bought in. This was clear by the success we had at Conference and Sectionals, but we had some great times at a variety of other meets along the path.

Respect is earned and cannot be expected nor forced. It’s hard gaining respect and I believe that a person’s character can lead to the success or failure of gaining that respect.

Finally….

The season ended with a bang. The girls finished strong. We had many athletes finish within the top 16 at sectionals and we ended up finishing 4th overall, what impressed me more was the poise at which they swam. We didn’t have nearly as much fear as we have in the past. The girls were confident and calm; they swam like it too.

The boys finished the season strong as well, including having at least one swimmer in every event. The meet started and finished the strongest, with our 200 medley and 400 free relay setting new school records.

I’m extremely proud I was a part of these teams and look forward to continuing my coaching career.

Recently I was given a copy of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and decided that I will partake in applying these laws to my life online.

My hope is that I can also urge you, my readers and friends, to also partake and keep me accountable for my goals, dreams and ambitions as I also help you.

• List some of your Major Goals. No more than 10; No less than 5. Figure out which ones need help.
  1. Become a Head Coach of a HS or Club Program
  2. Achieve Level 3 ASCA Certification or Higher
  3. Prove my self as knowledgeable in Leadership/Coaching
  4. Become a speaker on leadership and motivation for athletes/workers
  5. Get involved with post-college athletic groups, such as Master’s Swimming programs
• Assess your leadership ability. Questions not shown as respect the author and his work.
  • Strengths – Legacy, Growth, Buy-In, The Picture, Empowerment, Inner Circle, Magnetism, Intuition, Respect, Solid Ground, and Addition. From what I gather, it goes along the same lines of other analysis that I have done. I’m attracted to people and people are generally attracted to me. Essentially, I am a people person. I like to network and talk, and can seemingly gain their trust through example.
  • Needs Work – Timing, Sacrifice, Priorities, Momentum, Victory, Navigation, Influence, the Lid. What this is telling me is that I have to do a better job of increasing my effectiveness as a leader and rate on a better scale. Not only that, but I also need the willingness to sacrifice my personal time and set better priorities for myself and my teams that I work with.
  • Weaknesses – Process. Upon the first completion of the analysis this is the only area that is a true weakness. The process at which I grow needs work. I’d like some help in how to develop a prices of personal growth that I can engage in and would like some classes, articles or books to help improve myself in this category.
• Finally, ask others to rate your leadership ability. This is something I’ve not done and I would welcome those of you that read this and know me to do so.

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

This quote really resonates with me. As I was tweeting back and forth with a few friends, there was a sense of humility.

The reason this quote speaks to me so much is just that, you should have humility. Let other people tell you that you do a good job. Ask for that recommendation letter or LinkedIn recommendation.