AFM RSS Feed Follow Us on Twitter       
AMERICAN FOOTBALL MONTHLY THE #1 RESOURCE FOR FOOTBALL COACHES
ABOUT |  CONTACT |  ADVERTISE |  HELP  



   User Name    Password 
      Password Help





Article Categories


AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


Building Team Unity with the Games Inside the Game

How Oregon State\'s Jay Locey finds ways to make the game fun while bringing players together
by: Mike Kuchar
© More from this issue

Click for Printer Friendly Version          

These days the game of football is broken down to a science. Sure, most coaches preach lip service about blocking and tackling but they are usually the same ones that spend a great deal of money and countless hours filing into clinic discussions trying to find the latest innovative offensive scheme or researching a bone-crushing defense. So instead of searching the ends of the earth for the newest scheme or end-all technicality, some coaches have turned towards the intangibles like developing team chemistry in order to separate their squad from the rest. While the X’s and O’s are still an essential part of the game, some coaches find that developing the mental, and not physical part of the game, gives them the advantage.

Such was the case with former Linfield College (McMinnville, OR) head coach Jay Locey. It was early in the 2000 season when Linfield was running through a 4-0 season, recently coming off a win over defending D-III national powerhouse Pacific Lutheran. Sure, the Wildcats were rolling, but there was something missing. “I remember one of my players coming into my office and saying that despite our recent success, he felt kind of empty. And I couldn’t help but agree with him,” said Locey. “We had been so task-oriented on stuff preparing us for the game week but there was an element of emptiness present. Even though we should’ve felt like we were on top of the world, we weren’t” said Locey.

So, it was at that time when Locey decided he would incorporate some type of team building activity into his practice plan. It started with a philosophy: Locey tacked an index card on his office door with the words, “Get The Team To Care About Each Other” penned across its surface with big bold letters. During stretch lines in practice, Locey would blow the whistle and pair players up to play games like ‘Finger Dagger,’ a fencing joust using just your index finger. He would devote the first 15 minutes of meeting time before practice to a 100-man, no holds barred, Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament. It would be a two out of three competition with the winner staying and the loser sitting down.

“It was crazy and it was wild. Guys were cheering and screaming for each other and belly bumping and it really turned out to be a fun, fun deal,” recalled Locey. “I felt once we started doing that, we tended to be more consistent all season long. When guys play for each other because they care about each other, they practice harder, they play harder in games and they stay more committed to each other. We got back down to not just being task-oriented, but being relationship oriented. We just did little things to get the offensive guys to interact with the defensive guys. It might just be reintroducing yourself to three guys you hadn’t touched base with in a while.” The results were astonishing. The Wildcats, who were 24-12 in Locey’s first four years at Linfield, went 60-6 since he started to implement the team building activities. It was a monumental run that included a 2004 Division III national championship and a streak of 41 consecutive wins, second only to perennial powerhouse, Mount Union College.

So, when Locey was lured away from Linfield to Corvallis in 2005 by former teammate and head coach at Oregon State, Mike Riley, installing the team building activities was part of the deal. But Locey had some reservations about whether or not these warm and fuzzy-type activities would work at the big-time Division I level, where players could be a little more mature and a lot less patient. Those reservations were wiped out as soon as he and Coach Riley had a chance to sit down and talk. Riley wanted to incorporate some of the same things Locey had done at Linfield. He even came up with activities of his own to develop team chemistry such as monthly bowling matches, shuffleboard tournaments and paintball competitions.

“I’ve not always done a great job of doing stuff with our team other than the football end of it,” Riley said. “Jay has the experience of being the head coach at one spot for ten years where they added some things to help team building. The first four days of camp in 2005 we did four different things that have been out of the box that we hadn’t done before. They were Jay’s ideas and the team had a lot of fun with them. So I let Jay take the front and run with it.”

What Locey started to incorporate in Corvallis was a well-rounded, team building curriculum, complete with competitions between classes and various retreats to build team unity. The activities were carefully planned depending on the part of the season. Most of them were performed during summer camp when the drudgery of two-a-days would take its toll on the mental health of the players. Others were used sparingly, either in meetings or smack right in the middle of practice to break the monotony of the routine. While Locey admits that based on imagination, there are dozens of activities to construct, the staple of his team building activities at Linfield and at Oregon State were some of the ones described below.

SUMO WRESTLING

This was one of Locey’s first team building activities and a fan-favorite according to most of his players. He started it back at Linfield during the 2001 season, right around the time of summer camp. Strapped for supplies and a legitimately sized sumo wrestling ring, Locey got hold of inner tire tubes from stray bicycles and created a makeshift ring about ten yards in diameter. When tubes weren’t available, Locey would improvise by using a strand of football belts tied together to make up the ring. He divided his team into classes with each grade competing against one another in what turned out to be a colossal man-for-man battle.

Trying to replicate official rules as much as possible, the goal of each wrestler was to try – by any means possible – to oust his opponent from the ring. Elbows were flying; bodies were twisting and turning with the smacking of gristle and fat resonating throughout the field. Contestants even looked the part, stripping down to their bare girdles – quite a gruesome sight for the 300+ linemen in the program. But by the time the final bout was complete, the entire team lined up around the ring cheering for their teammates, louder than they had ever cheered before.

SWIM OLYMPICS

What better way to cool down during the dog days of summer camp than to take a luxurious dip in the pool? It was exactly the remedy that Locey was looking for when he created the Swim Olympics – another team building competition that pitted class against class for supreme reign of the Oregon State program. Using the Olympic-sized swimming pool in the athletic complex, players competed in a variety of events including a medley relay, complete with a backstroke and butterfly component, a synchronized swimming event and the ever-popular ‘big splash’ competition.

In the ‘big splash’ competition, participating players have a variety of dives, or shall we say flops, that they can execute from the springboard. Tumbling into the water by any means necessary, the judges (equipment managers) grade each participant on a 1-10 scale by holding up makeshift scoring cards according to who made the biggest splash. “It was just so much fun, as long as you bought into what Coach Locey was doing,” says Beaver center Kyle DeVan. “A lot of the seniors, like myself, swam the whole time and had a great time doing it. I think it brought us closer as a team. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it.”

CRAZY CALISTHENICS

For the most part, these team-building activities did not have to be organized. In fact, like the Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournament, many activities worked best when improvised. If Locey and the rest of the Oregon State staff felt as if practice was dragging or the players were not motivated, a whistle would blow and a small activity would take place. Along with the finger dagger game, Locey would have players pair up and thumb wrestle with each other, or play palm down hand slaps with the loser having to do pushups for his loss. A game called ‘surfer, shark, tourist’ was also extremely popular among the players. A spin off of Rock-Paper-Scissors, players would turn their backs on each other and on the count of three they would whip around revealing which character they were. A mimicked surfer would pose on a board, a shark would place his hand on top of his head and a tourist would pretend to snap makeshift pictures. In case you were wondering, sharks beat surfers, surfers beat tourists and tourists beat sharks. You figure it out.

But perhaps the most popular of these random acts were not unlike the silly tag games you would play in grade school. Players would participate in a ‘knots game’ where 8-10 players wound themselves up (using their hands) into a giant web trying to figure the quickest way out. Or they would play a game called ‘blob tag’ where groups of players would hold hands while trying to catch independent players to bring them into their blob and into their team. Quite a metaphor for team building, if you think about it.

Sounds elementary? It is, and it doesn’t matter according to Locey. The point is, the game is not important as long as the players are having fun and rooting for each other. “It just made things more fun for coaches. It developed relationships among our players and it minimized the grind of double sessions during the summer,” said Locey. Oregon State’s staff was so confident that it developed team chemistry, they videotaped these playful activities just to show recruits how tight they were as a unit. Wanna watch last season’s game tape? Forget about it. Watch us play some blob tag. Of course, the results spoke for themselves. The Beavers finished 9-4 with a convincing win over Maryland in the Emerald Bowl. “The greatest incentive is if you want to go out there because you’re playing with guys you like and you really don’t want to let your buddies down,” said Locey. “If we can get guys to care about each other, that’s probably the greatest cause you can get: to go out there as one. Sometimes they get so locked in that they forget they’re friends. If nothing else it’s a chance for us to hang out and really have a good time together.”






NEW BOOK!

AFM Videos Streaming Memberships Now Available Digital Download - 304 Pages of Football Forms for the Winning Coach



















HOME
MAGAZINE
SUBSCRIBE ONLINE COLUMNISTS COACHING VIDEOS


Copyright 2024, AmericanFootballMonthly.com
All Rights Reserved