Success can be tough. While UCLA Softball won its 11th title in program history this week, the Arizona Wildcats, with 6 titles, finished runner up for the fifth time in it’s history.
I interviewed UA Coach Mike Candrea at the beginning of the season. While his words inspired me, some of them haunted me. Success is tough – it breeds expectations. Coach noted, “The expectations are very high. It’s a unique situation here because when we finish second, the College World Series people say, “What happened?” They don’t say, “Great job!” You’re not going to get a ticker-tape parade just because you got to the College World Series. That’s expected.”
With only two seniors and six freshmen on this year’s squad, Candrea had his work cut out for him despite the annual expectation of a national title. It’s too bad runner up is not enough anymore. One more win and the press coverage would have been different. They would have splashed the Wildcat home page with photos and banners. Instead, there’s no mention of the Cats title run. Candrea put it in perspective, “It’s always tough to end the season on a losing note, but there’s many kids that dream of getting to the College World Series and getting to the championship series.”
It’s informative to go full circle and examine the foundation for another Championship season. Here are a few highlights from my interview with Coach Candrea:
Wake Up Call
I’ve always found that it’s much more effective to be tougher on kids early on and ease up on them than try to ease up on them and get tougher. My first meeting many times is a little bit of a wake-up call to the recruits because you’ve spent a few years recruiting them and filling their heads with all these good things about how great they are and how much they contribute. Then all of a sudden, reality sets in. You tell them, “Here are the expectations. If you don’t follow the expectations, here’s the door.”
I lay it on the line pretty well the first day about what the expectations of this program are and what I expect out of someone who puts on the Arizona uniform and represents this program, university and community.
A lot of it deals with the recruiting process and getting the right type of kids who understand the expectations here. Secondly, it’s a matter of whether you’re going to allow the tail to wag the dog or the dog’s going to wag the tail. I’ve always been a firm believer that discipline is the foundation for success.
Coaching Philosophy – The 3 C’s
The first one is being competent at what you do. One of the great parts of coaching is trying to get young kids to become students of the game. That’s something that I have always been in my life. Something that’s missing for young kids today is the desire to understand their sport inside out, forward and backward. Any good coach has to be competent at what they do because the players are the recipients of their hard work and efforts.
The second thing is that you need to be consistent in how you are as a person and your approach to things. I have a consistent approach and have our players are aware that my approach is one of our strengths.
The third and probably the most important thing is that you care about them as individuals. One thing I’ve found is that kids will forget about the X’s and O’s that you teach them, but 10 years from now, they’re going to remember whether you really cared about them as an individual and helped them grow, especially in the game of softball.
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