We recently got back from a vacation to the beach. It was a
wonderful time with the whole family. If your family is like mine, most days
you can’t drag the kids out of the bed in the morning. But at the beach, the
kids (grandkids, in this case) were up well before the adults.
One of my favorite things to do is to cook breakfast. I cook
them whatever they want and if there aren’t leftovers, then I’ve misjudged. A
couple of the grandkids love to help me and it is a joy to have them in the
kitchen with me. The others…not so much. They just wait patiently.
I also cook breakfast every Sunday morning for my wife and
I. I love to have it almost ready and then call her to the table, maybe from a
slumber. So, where’s this going? What has this got to do with sports? I’ll get
to that in a minute.
I love scrambled eggs. I love cooking scrambled eggs. I’m
picky about my eggs. They have to be from pasture-raised chickens. Beat well.
Allow butter in the skillet to sizzle a bit. Cook slow. Don’t overcook. A dash
of salt and pepper.
So now you’re really wondering if I’ve lost my mind. This
isn’t the Cooking Page, it’s the Sports Page. OK, so here’s the deal: Cooking
those eggs Sunday morning made me think about how important it is to take care
of the little stuff.
If you want to cook really great scrambled eggs, you’ve got
to pay attention to the details. If you want to be a great athlete, you’ve got
to do the little things.
A colleague shared a quote with me this week: “Inches make
champions.” It’s from Vince Lombardi. Coach
Lombardi was known for his attention to detail. Nothing was unimportant to him
on a football field.
I have been around a lot of very good and very successful
coaches in my career. I can tell you that they all have one thing in
common—they pay attention to those small details.
David Ellis was the best offensive line coach I’ve ever
known. He was a master at teaching young men about life and blocking. And he
never stopped addressing the details. His linemen took the right step every
time.
Now that might not sound like such a big deal, but it is. If
your first step is precise and intentional, you gain an advantage over the
player that you are trying to block. The same thing is true for lots of sports.
I know that with a lot of basketball moves, the first step makes all the
difference.
I get asked a lot what it is that makes the local football
teams so successful. That answer is difficult but one thing that I can tell
them for sure is the attention to detail. I know that the MHS football team
will still be doing the same drills, the same little things in November that
they were doing in August.
I have heard Coach Ellis on many times on Monday during the
last week of the season, after fourteen games and four weeks of preseason, tell
his young charges, “we’ve got one more week to get it right.” That was just
before he led them out to do one more drill to make sure that they got the
little things right. That they got their steps down precisely.
What little things should you be paying attention to?
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