Jamy Bechler

Providing Insights on Leadership and Success. Coach Bechler is a John Maxwell Leadership Team Member.

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Apr 12 2022

Conference Champions

“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.” (John C. Maxwell)
(editor’s note: Article originally written in March of 2022)

I had the pleasure of speaking with the boys basketball team at my old high school.

Please click here to listen to the 2-minute audio version of this article from the Success is a Choice podcast network.

I’m very proud of them and their coach Jeff Turner (he was my JV coach). In fact, they won the conference title this year. 

As I was talking to the guys, it hit me out of the blue that this was 2022 and my team won the championship in 1992.

Despite 5 out of 4 people being bad at math, this was fairly simple for me to compute all by myself that it had been 30 years since we won.

Wow! I’m getting old.

As a sports guy I know there’s no such thing as an unbeatable opponent.

But I’ve got to say, Father Time is undefeated!

30 years since the Jonesville Comets were picked last in the Big 8 preseason poll but then lost only one conference game en route to winning the title.

Our group of 6 seniors (Chad Benson, Pat Dempsey, Paul Lyons, Marty McKitterick, Jason Walker, and yours truly) had come a long way since we won ONLY five games TOTAL during our middle school years.

Sure, we added some valuable pieces to our core group of seniors but still, nobody outside of our circle thought we’d be much.

The great motivational speaker, salesman, and author Zig Ziglar used to say, “A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else, thought they could.”

Don’t get me wrong, we believed we could do something special, but we also needed a coach that believed in us and would work to develop us.

We needed someone to maximize our strengths and minimize our weaknesses.

It was important for us to have a leader that not only told us where we could end up but show us how to get there.

The 2015 University of Central Florida football team was horrific. They went 0-12. They didn’t win a single game.

Two years later, UCF went undefeated winning all 13 of their games.

They had 51 players that played on both teams.

Sometimes we just need to spend more time developing the potential of the people we already have.

 

 
Jamy Bechler is the author of four books including The Captain and The Bus Trip, host of the Success is a Choice Podcast, professional speaker, and trains organizations on creating championship cultures. He previously spent 20 years as a college basketball coach and administrator.  The Leadership Playbook is Bechler’s online program that helps athletes become better teammates and more positive leaders while strengthening a team’s culture. As a certified John Maxwell leadership coach, Bechler has worked with businesses and teams, including the NBA. Follow him on Twitter at @CoachBechler. To connect with him via email or find out about his services, please contact speaking@CoachBechler.com. You can also subscribe to his insights on success and leadership by clicking here.

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Written by Jamy Bechler · Categorized: Leadership, Personal Growth, Sports, Teams & Organizations · Tagged: Atlanta Falcons, Character, Choices, Circumstances, Dallas Cowboys, Ezekiel Elliott, Football, Habits, Integrity, Julio Jones, NFL, Success is a Choice, Zeke Elliott

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