Chemistry Class – Team-Building is an important tool for developing cohesion among players.

There is no exact blueprint for team-building, no scientific formula for team chemistry. But it’s easy to spot the teams that have it and the teams that don’t. Enthusiastic, focused sidelines and camaraderie that oozes off the bus are signs of a team with good chemistry. Finger-pointing, listless practices and team cliques are signs of a program in need of a boost of team-building. But how do you alter your team’s chemistry? How do you create a sense of unity when your roster turns over significantly from year to year? Answers vary, but it starts with effort. Team-building has to be a priority, like it is for these five successful head coaches, who each have their own formulas for creating chemistry.

A Visit to the VA

Heading into his 20th season at Ithaca College, Head Coach Mike Welch always has made team-building a priority. He’s constantly looking for signs that his team may not all be on the same page. He looks to see if cliques have developed on his team in the offseason. But a lack of team chemistry is most evident, he says, when times are tough, after a loss or after a key player is lost to injury. And by then, it may be too late.

“I think every coach must work hard to develop relationships with his players,” he said. “As a coach, you can’t have such an ego that you can’t listen. There might be something wrong that can be fixed. Team chemistry is not all on players; it’s on the whole organization.”

Welch points to something his Hall of Fame predecessor at Ithaca used to say. “Jim Butterfield always used to say, ‘If I go down on that practice field and don’t hear someone laughing and having a good time before things get started, that’s when I start to worry,’” Welch said.

There’s plenty of laughing and good times these days at Ithaca, both on and off the field. The fun even extends an hour and a half away from campus to the Bath Veterans Administration Hospital.

In association with the local branch of The Elks Club, Ithaca football has been connected with the VA hospital for decades. The Elks Club annually takes patients from the VA hospital to Bombers football games. Welch started a tradition of bringing the veterans onto the field after a game and having the players come over and express their appreciation.

That tradition has grown to include a team visit to the hospital, an event Welch says is among his program’s best team-building exercises. On a Saturday during the offseason, the Bombers load up on a bus and journey over to bowl and play pool during a day of fun with the veterans. Relationships are built; team chemistry is improved.

“I think you become a better person when you do things for others, rather than just yourself. The more our players are like that, I think it helps the team,” said Welch. “They’re giving up a Saturday and as we all know, a student-athlete’s time is very limited.”
Some Really Disgusting Pancakes

The team-building at Ottawa University’s preseason bivouacking camp is infectious. The pancakes are not.

It’s a trade Head Coach Kent Kessinger will make every time.

Before August practice begins, Kessinger divides the Braves into 10-man teams. Then, they head out on a glorified camping trip at the peak of the scorching hot Kansas summer. They stay overnight at a desolate camp site, splitting their time between competing in intense events like blind-folded catch and getting to know their teammates.

“I want a senior lineman to know where a freshman running back is from and how many siblings he has,” said Kessinger. “What I’ve noticed with our team that I think has been really positive since we’ve been doing this is that there is not a prevalent hierarchy of seniors, juniors and sophomores and freshmen in how the team hangs out together.”

Downtime at the camp is limited. There is a players-only meeting to determine the season’s goals. There is a discussion of team rules. At night, the team watches a movie together outside on the side of the shelter. Some players sleep on the floor in the rudimentary shelter; others bring tents.

It’s hot, uncomfortable and the cuisine prepared by the players is far from five-star. “It’s always interesting when you’re making pancakes for 90-plus people,” said Kessinger. “You’ve got guys in there that barely know how to flip a pancake. There are some really disgusting pancakes that we eat.”

But the end result is invaluable to the Braves. The camaraderie improves and so does the team’s confidence and trust in each other. It’s something you can see on the field.

Kessinger began emphasizing team-building in his second year at Ottawa – 2006. The Braves went 1-9 that year, but that freshman class would emerge as the catalysts to Ottawa’s emergence as a NAIA playoff team. In 2009, led by the same senior class that bonded at one of Kessinger’s camps, the Braves went 11-1.

“I’m not going to say everything goes back to the team-building, but they were a very tight group,” Kessinger said.

‘My Mom’s Been Diagnosed with Cancer’

Pete Shinnick was in his third season as a head coach, when two of his Azusa Pacific players were injured in practice and had to be carted off the field.

It shook his team.

The emergency room was a mile from campus. What Shinnick found when he arrived at the scene made a permanent mark on him, one that still influences his coaching today.

“There were 25 players already there, kickers, linebackers a few O-linemen, all sitting together, waiting to find out what was going on with teammates,” said Shinnick. “When I saw that, obviously I didn’t want the injury or to be in the emergency room, but I wanted the end result. I wondered how I could get these guys into different groups at different times during the season to create this unity?”

Now the head coach at UNC-Pembroke, Shinnick still strives to create team unity and regularly implements team-building activities. There are dodge ball games and Kanacki tournaments, a form of Frisbee football played with a tennis ball. Navy Seal instructors are brought in to lead special sessions.

But it’s the life stories, told by teammates to their teammates publicly, that often have the most lasting effects.

“We’ve had kids say, ‘Hey, just so you guys know, my mom’s been diagnosed with cancer’ or ‘I just met my dad yesterday,’ “ Shinnick recalls. “I heard Dick Tomey speak awhile ago. He shared that he did this, and I said right then that I was going to start doing the life stories with my team.”

The sharing process begins with a team meeting. Shinnick will hand pick around eight or nine players to come up and answer 10 background questions in front of the entire team. Questions might include:

•  What is one of your strengths and one of your weaknesses?

•  Who is the most influential person in your life?

•  What is your greatest athletic achievement?

The team is then divided into groups that reassemble throughout the football facility. There are groups in the weight room, the locker room and meeting rooms. They all face each other in circles and reveal elements of their life.

It’s all designed to make sure Shinnick doesn’t walk out onto the practice field and see 100 individuals keeping to their self instead of one team engaging with each other. “We try to break down those barriers immediately,” said Shinnick. “We make them tell a life story immediately in the fall. Every time they eat a meal during fall camp, you have to eat with another position.

“Unity is one of the core values,” he continued. “From me doing these things and from seeing it, it’s one of the things I think can take an average team to be a very good team, and very good team to be an excellent team. I just think it carries you further when you got guys who believe in each other and support each other.”

An Annual Clean-Up

Doane College’s football players annually partake in a community clean-up.

“Each spring, usually in late April or early May, we devote a Saturday to working in the community,” said Head Coach Matt Franzen. “We divide the groups into eight players and a coach and they are assigned to different projects in the community. It is a great team-building activity for us.”

The players send out fundraising letters to their hometown businesses and families. “The idea is that the fundraising is done through their own community and families,” added Franzen. “The work benefits our local community and all of the money goes back to outfitting our players.

“We buy each player a travel suit and cleats and maybe another item like a backpack with our Doane football logo on it. The activities include working with the local churches, helping the elderly with projects at nursing homes, mowing lawns, painting, and helping with everyday house repairs. Each group needs to complete three to four different jobs. It’s a real bonding experience for our team.”

Community-Building
Equals Team-Building

Head Coach Joe Hadachek of Union Community High School in LaPorte City, Iowa arrived back in town from a trip just hours after fierce winds in excess of 100 miles per hour had ripped through the area, flattening buildings and leveling farms.

Hadachek began texting his players and coaches. Soon, his players could be seen across the area helping clean up the damage. They removed giant, uprooted trees that were no match for the storm. They helped remove the massive amounts of debris that was left behind in ravaged crop fields.

No one was surprised. The Union Knights are very much a part of the community.

“We’re not just a football team,” said Hadachek. “We’re people who care about our town, our community. It’s a lot more than just winning football games.”

There is no better example of that than the Knights’ annual participation in the Special Olympics. Hadachek said approximately 25 players, half of the varsity roster, volunteered this year. It’s become a Union tradition, one that Hadachek believes has helped produce some of his program’s best teams.

Union defensive line coach Adam Gassman has a child who competes in Special Olympics. Gassman inspired Hadachek to get the program involved. “It takes a special group of guys to get it started,” said Hadachek. “Then, once it’s in place and you’ve done it over the course of several years, then, I think there’s an expectation there. This is what we do. This is what we’re known for. This is our reputation.”

Hadachek spends the day working as team photographer. He takes pictures of bonding moments and says he believes players gain a sense of appreciation working with Special Olympic athletes. “It is very heart-warming to see on our young athletes, when they’re arm-and-arm, embracing these champion athletes,” Hadachek said. “It doesn’t matter how good a football player you are. It’s more so about how big a heart you have.”

In addition to the Knights’ community service, Hadachek works on his team’s chemistry in other ways. The Knights will need to come together more than ever this season. Twenty-three seniors are gone, leaving Union with only two returning starters.

Hadachek knows he needs more from his 15 seniors. So he gave them each a book, John Maxwell’s “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.” Hadachek met with his seniors weekly as a group to discuss chapters of the book and how it relates to the upcoming season.

    Consider the meetings Hadachek’s version of chemistry class.