Ryan's Personal Application
Over the years I have been on several hundred teams ranging from school groups to sports teams. Some have lasted for years, some have only for a day, some have been good, and some have been bad, but most of them have gotten the job done one way or the other. Wen I say most, that means there were some bad ones every so often. Recently, I was on a baseball team that was fun to be on, but we were just terrible because we lacked what makes a team good. Of the four components of the theoretical diagram, our team lacked communication, commitment, and leadership. Even though the tam was full of individuality, it was too much and actually hurt the team rather than help. To begin, we lack the most important thing in all of sports, leadership. Our leadership fell in the hands of our coach and team captain. The problem with our coach was everything seemed to be a popularity contest and he played favorites. This did to help our team a single bit. It made players frustrated, and the assistant coaches irritated. The coach as was noted to be a great player in high school, but he did not know exactly how to take his personal baseball skills and teach them to the teams that he has coached over the years. With years of having losing records after losing records, the school or him should figure out either to have him step down or change his ways how he teaches the game and develops players. One change is who the team captain should be. The team captain also lacked leadership skills. Our team captain was voted in by the team, FROM LAST YEAR; only half of the current team was from last year. When deciding on certain things within the team, he really did not talk to anyone else except his core group of friends on the team. He was on varsity for all four years of high school, so he did not really connect with teammates that came up over the years because he did not play much with them. This brings me to communication, as you can tell from our leaders, there was no communication. The same came when our team was on the field, you need to communicate between each other otherwise you will lose, and it showed. The simplest things in calling the fly ball so one runs into each other, but that was I guess too hard for some. The last component of a great team that we lacked was commitment. For any team whether its sports or with school, commitment is always needed. We had a player tae a vacation in the middle of the season. It did not sit well with his teammates or the coach because we lost a very good player for a couple of weeks and then further more as a punishment from the coach, he had to sit games when he came back for letting his team down and abandoning them. We also had a couple of players who thought it was a good idea to leave their team and go to summer fest instead of practicing. While the rest of our team was practicing and sweating our butts off in the ninety degree whether, they were enjoying themselves listening to a concert. Our team as a whole was not very happy with them. The coaches and team leaders all agreed that the two players had to miss games and sit because they let the team down. Commitment is the number one thing that was terrible on our team because if you are not committed to practicing, how will our team be able to mold and become a better, communicating, and winning team. Obviously when it comes to every team, individuality is always going to show and it is not bad to have it. But too much individualism on a team can easily hurt how the team produces. As for a baseball team, having players become too individual does not allow a team that needs to work together to win. Yeah, you will have certain people become individual because they play different positions that are completely different, but they are still one team and have to win as a unit. As you can read, I have personally been on a team where it has failed, whether it is lacking or having an abundance of the key components, it is truly disappointing to not be a great team.