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FEATURE 1
Are Junior Structure Changes the Answer?
FEATURE 2
High School Tennis Don't Get No Respect
NEW APP Tour
NEW 2019 Awards
NEW: Husband/Wife
Pro Teams |
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DECEMBER
2019
Bill Patton on
Growing Tennis
Growing the
Game - Stop, Look, and Listen
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With the publication
of The Athlete Centered Coach, Bill Patton is working hard to
influence sports culture globally. There is a revolution going
on in coaching, and Bill has always colored outside the lines,
so he is ready for new lines to be drawn. He used to take his
toys apart to see how they worked. He turned those experiences
into a strength. Now he creates innovative templates so that
others can build on success and make it their own. He is most
proud of winning an NCS Championship, and becoming a published
author for the first time. Once when trying to speak another
language to a player he thought he was asking if she was embarrassed,
but he used the word for pregnant. That got sorted out later. |
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Bill Patton is
Tennis Professional and is currently coaching his 10th different
high school with 30+ years of experience in the field. He has
coached at several schools with many great results. Mainly, the
players had a great time maximizing their games, and playing
on the teams. He is now featured on coachtube.com, with three different
tennis courses.
Bill and his
business partner Styrling Strother have started USATennisCoach,
LLC which trains, certifies, mentors, and collaborates with high
school tennis coaches.
Bill, a Maverick
Leader is co-founder of USATennisCoachl,a Catalyst forOmni Athlete:
The Future of Sport, a PTR and MTM Professional. |
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Growing
the Game - Stop, Look, and Listen
By Bill Patton
Stop, Look and Listen
What if you thought you were
doing a great job, and it turned out that you weren't? Would
you want someone to tell you? Every great person has had to deal
with significant adversity on their way to success. Some of it
can be downright humbling. I pretty much start every process
with a few questions like 'What else am I not doing?', and 'Is
there something I am doing that I need to stop doing?'
Stop and Think Time of Year
Now is the best time of year
to really think. Consider the activities of 2019. What were the
achievements and failures? What did you learn? How does that
effect 2020 and the 5 year plan beyond that? What unintended
consequences came about because of what looked like positive
initiatives? What can you learn from the history of those who
came before you so as not to repeat their mistakes? One thing
that strikes me is how prone we are to engage in fad behaviors,
while leaving tried and true ones in the dust. I love to jump
on a bandwagon just like you do. Example: When I first started
writing books, it was inspired by what looked like a trend where
eBooks would overtake print books as the reading of the future.
5 years later, my print book sales are 4x my eBook sales, so
I needed to readjust my plan to create longer works, and to develop
a better plan for the formats of them. I started in a direction,
but quickly learned and adjusted. I had to stop and look at the
results. I listened to what people were telling me about their
preferences. |
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Look for Collaboration
One of my greatest frustrations
in my sports career is how difficult it has been to get anyone
to stop long enough to actually think about what they are doing
in order to discover if it's actually effective. Leaders in our
industry provide some great services and some that almost no
one has an interest in. Some of the so-called services rendered
to me as a teaching pro have been of the retread variety, packing
the same old stuff in a different order and calling it new. Or
products and services that are supposed to be a wonderful benefit,
but they are either way out of my price range, or not really
something I want, nor do many tennis professionals want these
so-called 'benefits'. It would be wise for teaching organizations
to stop and really listen to their members.
The USTA is famous for changing
the rules of things quite often, seemingly because it's going
to make things better. Unfortunately, it's created a cottage
industry of trying to keep up with and cope with the changes.
As you may know, I was one of the very first adopters of the
One Weekend Tournament, because I got so much feedback from players
that they would play if it weren't two weekends, because they
had a commitment on the other one. Then I moved on to one-day
tournaments, especially for Novice players, because they aren't
ready to commit a whole weekend for their tennis. All of this
happened in the mid-2000's. I listened to what my people wanted,
delivered and it was a raging success.
Engage in the Process
Contrast that with my time on
the USTA NorCal Junior Council, where I wanted my committee to
stop and evaluate, 'Where are we?', during that time it had been
years since we had a player in the top 100 or one who had gained
direct entry into a Grand Slam. Prior to my taking over that
committee, there were very few NorCal kids who were getting D1
offers to play college tennis. I wanted to know why. I fought
my committee tooth and nail on this, and the former chair undermined
my position. I then did what any good leader would do, I held
a brainstorming session where every idea was a good idea, so
we could get them on the whiteboard before discussing. What amazed
me was how white-collar professionals in the group were unable
to hold a simple brainstorming session to simply go through the
process to get everything out BEFORE trying to make critical
observations about each one. I also proposed at that time that
the group create a 5-year plan that will live beyond the terms
of the board above us and that each subsequent group would adjust
the 5-year plan and maybe even start working on a 10-year plan.
It's not brain science. |
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Stop the Politics
The level of mean spirited politics
and people's ability to sacrifice the good of all, and doing
the greatest good for the most people then showed itself. After
setting the goal of having one of our players get into the top
100 and then qualify for a Slam with direct entry in the next
five years, while also doubling the number of D1 scholarship
recipients, my fellow professionals stopped attending meetings
in what seemed like a coordinated attack designed to stop a quorum
from proceeding in this agenda. Of course, I also wanted to see
initiatives that would give more opportunities to more players,
so that we could grow our base with the idea that more players
will create a stronger pool for the top players to overcome on
their way to elite level play. |
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Do Your Own Thing
Once the full-fledged sabotage
of these processes was in play, I decided to resign, since I
found myself in a situation where I would self-medicate to overcome
my frustration with the politicos around me. So in an act of
self-care, I left in order to pursue success in my own arena
and decided to simply stay in my cave for a bit. About 18 months
later, I reemerged with the thought that I wasn't doing to let
those with a private agenda or the naysayers affect me. I took
stock of my dissatisfaction with being marginalized there and
in other places, and decided to go national but now I've gone
international since most countries in the world have been exposed
to my writing and other works.
The Power of Goals
I can't claim any credit, but
I do find it very interesting about the power of goals, and goal
setting that in subsequent years NorCal produced a top 100 player
in Men's and Women's tennis, and also seemed to dramatically
increase the number and prestige of D1 Scholarships given including
USC, Cal, and Stanford. I believe that goals once conceived are
very powerful and can outlive those that create them.
Ask Tough Questions
So, take stock of where you are.
Are you surviving or thriving? Are you a gatekeeper or a person
empowerer? Are you a team player fully engaged in the process,
or are you out for your personal agenda and working for your
little select cadre? Are you working on new initiatives? Do you
work in the are of the tried and true, or are you currently defending
an indefensible position, rearranging the deck chairs on the
titanic? Do you defend a program that has had a large capital
outlay with little true results to show for it, except a website
and app and a couple of thousand players?
Follow the Leaders
I grow the game everywhere I
go, by adhering to solid principles for growth, and I don't grow
weeds. If you go back to a previous article on Building Community
here in Tennis Business, you will find some of those rock-solid
ideas. So remember, never stop questioning, and ask yourself,
'What more can I do?', and 'What do I need to stop doing?'
I will gladly give a FREE 20-minute
phone or ZOOM consultation to anyone who wants to solve a sticky
issue. I am also available for consultation on how to make your
club or organization humm. My educational background is in Industrial
Psychology, Education and Brain Research, but it was when my
parents asked me when I was 12 what I wanted to be in life and
I answered 'A Sorcerer', that was most true. |
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