Marc Trestman Has a Plan to Save the Chicago Bears
By Coach Boss
(Personal Story)
A few years ago I had an athlete I’ll call Aaron. I took Aaron to a big competition against other guys I was pretty sure he would compete with at our State track meet.
Aaron felt ready and was pretty confident.
He ended up choking pretty bad and did not do well at all against these other kids.
Afterwards I told him that I was hoping for one of two outcomes with his performance; I either wanted to see him do really well and demoralize the competition or, I wanted to see him get his butt kicked by everybody.
Understandably, He was kind of shocked.
I explained that I wanted him to do well in order to gain confidence against really good competition or I wanted him to realize that he couldn’t get to comfortable just being good; he needed to be great. That experience allowed me to push him harder in practice; he became more focused and he ended up beating almost of the competitors at that previous meet at state and took 4th (shot put).
The next year, we went back to the same meet and once again he did really poorly. Up to that point he had been the state leader (shot put) in our classification all year long. That meet, not only did he throw poorly but he lost the state lead by almost 2 feet to the only returning guy to beat him the year before at state.
We refocused and he rededicated himself, made it to state again and destroyed everyone of his competitors on his first throw. He went on to become a state champion. He credits that experience as the springboard to his state title.
(End of personal story)