Leadership in Sports

Introduction

A leader in sports is a person who holds an informal or formal leadership role in a team and influences other members of the group to pursue a common objective. Normally, the leader in sports should ensure players are satisfied, perform well themselves and lead the team towards success. Leadership positions have a significant role in sports and determine a team’s success. Coach Carter is a film that shows the importance of good leadership in sports.

Importance of leadership in sports

A leader in sports has position power over the entire team. Nonetheless, their role is more encompassing than becoming a good judge of player performance. Successful teams in sports have strong leaders. Leadership encompasses emotional and rational skills. A good leader knows the strengths and weaknesses of the team and is aware of the opportunities and threats of the team. Therefore, the leadership role is crucial in accomplishing the mission (Chee et al., 2018). (Chee et al., 2018). Besides, a leader is essential in keeping the entire team united towards the set target.

 

A leader is important in the team because they boost and motivate the confidence and morale of the team. A leader, be it a coach or captain, act as a sheer influence in the team’s success and lead towards unbelievable victories. A charismatic and dynamic leader can make a tremendous outcome in sports. Leadership skills in sports are important. The leader is the biggest influence in the team. If a coach is seen as a good and strong leader, it inspires the team to work harder and attain their target. The quality of a coach is normally passed down to the team (Chee et al., 2018). (Chee et al., 2018). As its definition states, leadership is the ability of a person to get someone else to do something and help themselves. Therefore, leaders in sports help the team achieve their goals regardless of the challenges.

Summary

Coach Carter is an excellent film that presents the importance of good leadership in sports. It is a movie released in 2005 and acknowledged among the greatest basketball movies. It is a film based on a true narrative of coach Ken Carter in Richmond High School. Ken Carter made headlines for benching his whole undefeated team in 1999 for their poor academic performance (Chee et al., 2018). (Chee et al., 2018). In the movie, Samuel L. Jackson takes the role of Ken Carter after he was offered an opportunity to coach the basketball team at Richmond High School, his former high school. He was among the best athletes to ever go to secondary education during his time. Carter took the job to transform the poor neighborhood of Richmond (Dolly C & Nonyelum P., 2018). (Dolly C & Nonyelum P., 2018). Precisely, he wanted to change the student-athletes in the basketball team.

 

He made the students in the team sign contract declaring that they will only participate in sports if they attend all classes, as well as practice, wear a tie, maintain a C grade and suit during sports days and respect all their coaches and teammates. The coach implemented a variety of methods to lead and inspire the team to win the state championship undefeated despite noticing from the progress report that most of the team members were doing poorly in academics, hence violating the contract they signed in the beginning (Dolly C & Nonyelum P., 2018). (Dolly C & Nonyelum P., 2018). He took immediate action where he locked the gym and canceled all the games to get the attention of the team, school, and the community. He stated that the first word in ‘student athlete’ is a student. Therefore, he took this immediately until his team players improved their academic performance. This led to a huge commotion and outraged the team, school, and most people in the community (Dolly C & Nonyelum P., 2018). (Dolly C & Nonyelum P., 2018). However, the school management decided to open the gym after a long debate about whether to unlock it or not. Coach Carter avoided supporting the notion that a basketball player or any other player is above the law. He wanted to lead them to achieve their goals in the future and avoid ending up like most children in the community, that is, in jail or dead. He chose to quit the job but later reconsidered the decision and realized that he inspired and transformed athletes’ lives in the school. The basketball team refused to practice until their academic performance had improved. After improving their studies, they went back to practice for the state championship, which they were defeated with one round (Svyantek, 2017). (Svyantek, 2017). Although they did not attain that goal, they won the heart of the community. In addition, six of them went to college, and five of them won a scholarship.

 

Analysis of the movie

 

As a leader, coach carter believed that his team would leverage their basketball skills to gain scholarships after an excellent academic performance. Therefore, he insisted that every player attain a particular grade to be in the team. In this way, he knew he would help the students to excel not only in sports but also in academics. A leader has to help individuals attain their full potential even when they fail to see their potential. Leaders have to establish a desire, set the objectives, lead the way, and then assist in creating the team’s belief that they can attain their goals. Coach Carter led them because he wanted his team to have a chance at a better life (Movieclips Classic Trailers, 2018). (Movieclips Classic Trailers, 2018). As a leader, he had to develop that desire, show them what they can do, and then they can achieve it.

 

A leader should have a stand to back their beliefs even amid criticism. They have to stand up for their beliefs and be true to their values. Like leadership in any other sector, sports leadership was never meant to be easy. Most of the time, it requires the courage of the leader’s conviction to see it through. Carter believes that his team consists of students and emphasizes that they are students first before becoming athletes (Movieclips Classic Trailers, 2018). (Movieclips Classic Trailers, 2018). Therefore, when they fail to meet the academic requirements they have agreed on, he cancels game practices and tournaments until they attain the requirement, which leads to a conflict with his team, the school, and the community. He further closes the field to ensure that the students focus on their studies before resuming their basketball practice.

Leaders should also understand the power of teamwork. Leaders in sports should increase collaboration and enhance a strong team spirit to achieve a collective potential. They need better players to assist them in coaching other team players to make them better instead of relying on the talent of the better players. This is evident at the end of the film (Movieclips Classic Trailers, 2018). (Movieclips Classic Trailers, 2018). Due to their strong team spirit works collectively to help everyone reach the agreed academic level, with the stronger students training the weaker ones. Notably, team spirit and teamwork exceed sports in other fields such as education. It would be normal to find players coaching other players. However, helping one another with studies indicated the power of a team. To understand the power of teamwork, he punished the whole team, even if its the only member who made a mistake.

Leaders in sports should also have a vision. Coach Carter’s vision was to provide the team with a better future free from crime. He insists that he has first-hand experience with troubled young people as he highlights that most of his teammates back in high school are currently in jail or dead. He desires to transform the community through the current team (Razali et al., 2018). (Razali et al., 2018). He wants the team to overcome the education system, whose design will fail them. The coach used different leadership styles to attain his goals throughout the movie effectively. For instance, he uses transformational leadership to execute his vision. This style comprises the leader’s ability to get the team to do more than they initially expected. Carter projected every player could attain far more than they think of. He made the team triumph and suffer together (Razali et al., 2018). (Razali et al., 2018). The coach stands out in encouraging the team to do well in sports and other fields such as education.

As a sports leader, coach Carter attempted to motivate the team in the best way possible. He used motivation techniques such as second chances and punishment. He also uses encouragement by reminding them of their various skills, what they are capable of, how their training was precise what will help them win. Notably, he used discouragement to motivate the players to meet his expectations, whereby he told them they could not fulfill his expectations. This strategy is commonly known as reverse psychology. For instance, Cruz comes back asking for a second chance. Carter gives him a condition that he would join the team after completing 1000 suicides and 2500 push-ups within a short period. However, this task was impossible for Cruz. Nonetheless, the coach wanted the team to learn about teamwork, whereby they helped Cruz finish the task further.

Conclusively, leadership has a significant role in sports. It is important to a team because leaders carry their vision and ensure that they achieve the dream. Also, it must keep the team united. Unity is what builds and strengthens the team. Protagonist Samuel L. Jackson proves the importance of leadership in a team in Coach Carter. He makes the team sign a contract that they should only go for basketball practice when they attain a certain academic grade. At first, this idea was not received well by the team, school, and the community. However, the latter understood the essence of academic performance. The coach stood on his vision and was ready to support the team at all costs.