Post-Game Thoughts

Every game day, prior to tip-off, my assistant coach would print off a bare-bones paper we called “Post Game Thoughts.”

We passed these out to our players in the locker room immediately following their sprint up the tunnel after games.

The one-sheets were painfully plain. Across the top was a heading with the date and our opponent. Underneath were two blank lines for filling in the final score. Under that were two concise questions with lots of white space in between.

The two questions read:

1. What went well, and why?

2. What can we do better, and how?

Our players were tasked with answering those simple but complexly layered inquiries while the coals of the contest were still white hot. We wanted their unvarnished, immediate reflection.

What did they notice?

What could they see now — from their stools surrounded by sweat-soaked socks and ankle tape — that mostly hid while they were on the floor?

Where did they zig when they could have zagged?

What made that stretch in the second half so difficult now to recall?

With every drawer pulled open, things they needed but hadn’t been looking for emerged.

This integral exercise had to happen when our guys first returned to their lair because we wanted to know what happened in the game according to them. We didn't want or need a regurgitation of what we (their supposedly omnipotent coaches) were fixated upon. Nor did we want or need the myopic views of parents with lovingly clouded sight lines.

We were in search of the athlete’s unfettered recall. Not a synthesized play-by-play of the action, but a purposeful dig underneath what the public saw and the stat sheets showed.

Information from the experience. Golden nuggets that only a player has access to.

What our guys discovered through their unpacking helped us chart a next-steps course. An awareness of things they did that worked, things they did that didn’t, and what they might have failed to even try — and why — gave them hints about what to be on the lookout for moving forward.

Their candor also gave us, their coaches, some road signs to follow when plotting the future path. Through the written feedback of those in the throes of the action, we could see what our players understood and what they didn’t. We could see where some of the gaps were.

What ‘Post Game Thoughts’ routinely gave us was that…and so much more.

In addition to the technical directives, the exercise helped athletes more objectively frame both their own and their teammates’ play. The rearview mirror view showed the connective tissue between the actions. How one thing shapes or births or destroys another.

Cause and effect, when looked at after-the-fact, are often on clear display. It also taught our players that just because the body stops, the learning doesn’t have to. Before, during and after are connected by invisible string.

But the great Hope Diamond (the added value we hadn’t planned on) was the peek that we were granted to the internal lay of the land. The way a player responded on the page told us a lot about where she was emotionally.

Was she hopeful? Dejected? Frustrated? Confused? Angry? Giddy? Cocky? Checked-out? Lost?

At least a hint about her mental space in the moment almost always showed up in not only what she wrote but how she wrote it. Everything from the size and slant of her handwriting to the shape of her sentences and the detail she chose to add or leave out, gave me a glimpse of where the knots were.

We could see the channel our players’ heads and hearts were on. Like pitch pipes, their sweaty post-game thoughts furnished the note we should come in on. They helped us meet them where they were.

Bonus intel smeared in ink on soggy paper.

Clues to how to coach.