Kids don’t walk back through the doors until next week. I haven’t taught a single class yet. But I already know exactly what I’m hoping to see, because I’ve already watched it happen once.
Every fall, before the first bell ever rings, I send our teachers a roster: the guys who’ve expressed interest in playing for me that year. Small thing, takes me twenty minutes to put together. But it means that from day one, before a single teacher has taken attendance, they already know which kids are mine, and they know that if something comes up, they can bring it to me first instead of straight to the office.
That system proved itself to me last year in a way I still think about.
First week of school. New cell phone policy that year, no phones out on the turf, and students were about to head out there between classes. One of my coworkers, my neighbor teacher for six years at that point, spotted one of my new freshmen with his phone out. She called him out on it- nothing heavy-handed; she wasn’t even going to take the phone- just asked him to put it away.
He got smart with her.
Before she could even decide how to address it, one of my rising juniors stepped in. Quiet. No scene, no lecture in front of everybody. He just said something to the freshman, and the kid put his phone away and let it go.
She didn’t come find me because she needed backup. Nothing escalated enough to need it. She told me because she’d watched it happen and wanted me to know what kind of kid that junior was turning into.
I was so stinking proud of him I could hardly stand it. And he had no idea I’d ever hear about it.
The Standard Was Never a Baseball Rule
Every program has some version of “The Standard,” the four walls, the non-negotiables, whatever you call the character stuff underneath the box scores. Most coaches only ever test it in one place: on the field, where they’re standing right there watching it happen.
That’s not a standard. That’s supervision.
A standard isn’t real until it survives somewhere you’re not standing. The field is the easiest place in the world for a kid to hold the line, because you’re right there and he knows it. The turf between classes, week one, brand new rule, a freshman he barely knew yet, with the closest coach nowhere in sight, that’s the place that tells you the truth about what actually took.
That junior didn’t know I’d ever hear about it. He wasn’t performing for me. He corrected a freshman he barely knew because somewhere along the way, the standard stopped being something I hand him and became something he carries on his own, even for a kid who hadn’t earned a rep in a single practice yet.
That’s the whole ballgame right there. Not the swing. Not the sprint time. Whether the standard survives the room you’re not in.
Compliance Ends at the Fence. Commitment Doesn’t.
I’ve written before about the difference between compliance and commitment. Compliance is a kid doing the right thing because I’m standing there. Commitment is a kid doing the right thing when the only person he’s trying not to disappoint is a hundred yards away, or hasn’t even coached him for a single day yet as a program.
Out on that turf, first week of school, no coach around, is exactly where that difference gets tested. A compliant player keeps his head down. A freshman’s attitude problem with a teacher isn’t his business, and stepping in only costs him socially with zero upside. That’s the easy, reasonable, defensible choice. Most kids make it, and I don’t blame a single one of them for making it.
A committed player does the harder math, without anybody teaching him to do it in that exact moment. He knows the standard doesn’t stay on the field. He knows a freshman mouthing off at a teacher reflects on every guy who’ll wear that uniform that spring, whether a coach ever finds out or not. So he says something, quietly, to a kid he’d maybe met twice, knowing it could’ve gone sideways with a stranger just as easily as it went right.
That’s the 10 percent I talk about constantly, Urban Meyer’s nucleus, the guys who set the emotional temperature of a program whether I assign them the job or not. It’s easy to spot that 10 percent during a scrimmage. It’s a lot more revealing to find one of them on a turf field in August, correcting a kid he hasn’t even taken a single ground ball with yet.
Renaming the Label
Here’s the part that should sit with every coach reading this. That junior did the right thing quietly enough that it didn’t turn into anything. But it could have gone the other way. The freshman could have turned around in front of a group of classmates and called him a name for it. Suck-up. Teacher’s pet. Sellout. Whatever word your players use this year, the accusation underneath it never changes: you picked the adult over us.
I think that accusation is exactly backward, and I think it’s worth saying that to your team directly, not just believing it privately yourself. A kid who steps in for a teacher isn’t choosing her over a teammate. He’s choosing that teammate’s reputation, and the whole program’s reputation, over his own comfort in the moment. He’s willing to absorb a little friction so a freshman he barely knows doesn’t dig a hole with a teacher who’ll remember it for four years. That’s not currying favor. That’s carrying weight for somebody who might not even realize yet what just got carried for him.
Paul told a young pastor named Timothy something I think about constantly with my own guys:
“Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity.” (1 Timothy 4:12, ESV)
Nobody handed Timothy authority because of his age. He earned influence by the way he carried himself before anyone was required to listen to him. Same is true for a junior stepping in for a freshman he barely knew on a turf field in August. Nobody made him the example. He became one, in the one place that week where I couldn’t have told him to do it even if I’d tried.
What It Costs When Nobody Names It
If you never tell your players the standard travels past the field, most of them will assume it doesn’t. And the ones who do hold the line anyway, on a turf, in a classroom, at a lunch table, will do it alone, absorb whatever name gets thrown at them alone, and eventually wonder if it’s even worth it since nobody, including their own coach, ever said a word about it.
That’s how you lose your best culture-carriers. Not because they stopped caring. Because they carried something heavy in a place you never walked into, and you never told them you saw it or that it mattered.
I made sure that junior knew I’d heard, and that it mattered to me a whole lot more than anything he’d do on a baseball field that spring.
The Application
Before your season ever starts, before your first practice, tell your returners and your new guys both, plainly: the standard doesn’t stay on the field. It goes with them into every classroom, every hallway, every unsupervised minute this fall, even toward a teammate they’ve only known a week. Tell them you expect more from them than you’d expect from a kid who’s never worn your uniform, because the moment they put it on, they’re representing something bigger than themselves, whether a coach is standing nearby or not.
Then do the half most coaches skip. Ask your staff and the teachers you trust to tell you when one of your guys does something worth noticing, not just something worth disciplining. When you hear about it, whatever it is, go find that kid and name it to him directly. Tell him you heard. Tell him it mattered. Don’t let the only feedback he ever gets for carrying the standard be silence from you and name-calling from someone who doesn’t yet understand what he actually did.
The scoreboard will never show you this part of the job. But it’s the part that tells you whether your standard is real, or just something you talk about in the dugout and hope holds up everywhere else.
Greater Together, Coach O
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