Welcome to Be Good Do Good!

A quick introduction of myself and why I started this blog, Be Good, Do Good. I grew up in a smallish Texas Town, where I remember vividly playing outside all the time. Sun up to sun down I was outside with family and friends. As I grew older I started to really become interested in basketball. I had always loved, sports, but basketball was the sport I could see myself playing at a high level. My outside play quickly turned into meeting friends for pick up games at the local town courts, or in each others driveways where we all had goals set up.

As I learned the sport, my dad watched the NBA and started to pick up on the way they shot the ball, how the dribbled, the moves they made in the post and many other fundamentals of the game. We would spend hours outside in the driveway working on what he saw the pro’s execute. He never played sports, but he was an engineer and without a doubt, his coaching was the best I ever had. He taught me more about how to play the game than anyone else to coach me after. It was probably from those early days learning from my dad, that I developed a mind for development in sports. Here was a man, who never played the sport, teaching me to play at a high level. I eventually went on to earn a scholarship to play basketball at Notre Dame and ended my High school career as one of the all time leading shot blockers in the state, one of the all time leading scorers and rebounders in team history, and achieving the player of the year award for HS basketball in the 4A division.

This blog isn’t about me or my accomplishments, rather its about something I have noticed on a sharp decline over the last 15-20 years. It’s about the process we are using to develop the next generation of athletes in youth sports. My Dad always said to us, “go be good and do good.” He stressed in us, to find problems and offer solutions not complaints. So after some thinking and encouraging from friends and family. I have decided to write a blog about how I think youth sports should be used to develop athletes, not only to be better players of their sports, but also be become better people.

Over all my years playing and watching sports, I was always drawn to the coaches and how and why they did the things they did. I tried to reason out the logic behind the moves they made and the actions they took. After many years, I started to take down notes of what I saw and heard and how those actions worked out. I noticed what the best teams did, what the worst teams did. I also took note of those coaches who always seemed to have lasting relationships with many of their former players. I started to notice some commonalties. Certain things stood out in all of the top programs, the winning teams and the coaches who had former players always around part of the program and who spoke highly of the coaches. Characteristics began to form in my mind of what makes a good athletic program. As my kids grew older I watched what they went through in sports and what process was used in their development and I did not see very many of the characteristics that the best programs run by the best leadership in the country displayed. I watched kids become discouraged, kids quit, kids learn to not love the games they were playing, and maybe worse of all, kids continue to play and not play with joy. The more I looked around the more common these became. And that is when I started to think, there has to be a better way to do this? Youth sports has to be about something more than winning games. The development of players has to be central in any sports program, but even more so in youth programs.

So many coaches I noticed where just doing things the wrong way. And most of them were trying hard to do right, but didn’t know better and lacked resources to help them. Many were volunteer parents with jobs taking up most of their time. This is the problem I saw, so this blog is my way of finding a solution. As I add to this blog, I will explore different things I have learned and outline some things that I think all youth sports groups should be incorporating. We owe it to our kids to do better. Maybe this blog helps someone volunteering to coach their kids little league team. Maybe not. But this is my attempt to put into thoughts what I have learned over the years.

I hope to have others chime in as well. Coaches that I have noticed do a great job with development of kids in sports. From each of our experiences and knowledge we can help each other do better for our kids. Thanks for taking the time to read and looking into my blog.

Next post I’ll explore one of the most important aspects of a good developmental program, The Culture. And over a series of post, I will break down the things I have learned about what is present in a good culture and how to achieve it.

Coach Gotsch