I never stressed winning. I wanted the score to be an end result of practice. –John Wooden After several years of emphasizing process-oriented thinking as opposed to result-oriented competition I realized that it was time to determine what is the process. What are the components that helped take our varsity women’s curling team to two OUA and two CIS championships as well as gold at the Karuizawa International Championships? Well, last spring I assigned myself the task of identifying and
The crowd is hushed, no one willing to take a breath for fear of missing the shot to win the World Championship. Only one brave soul is willing to take that breath because they have prepared for this moment. Shot after shot, following the process that would lead to success. They have prepared for this one opportunity. They have divorced themselves from the outcome. They know how to win! Quietly, the thrower embarks on their pre-shot routine: set the
No single thing inspires more debate in curling lounges all across this land than STRATEGY! We know that games are won – and lost – on our good and not-so-good decisions. We also know that execution and tactics play a significant role in all strategy on the frozen sheet. But how often do we stop and ask ourselves if are we asking the right questions when it comes to our strategic maneuvers? We know from High Performance camps and
Issues with team dynamics and team building are often the most demanding module of High Performance clinics. I believe this is the result of people creating obstacles for themselves and in turn, inhibiting their quest for excellence due to these impediments. Therefore, the process of helping people get to their next stage of excellence can be found by assisting them in overcoming and understanding their obstacles. O. S. Marden explained that: Obstacles are like wild animals.
Performance has been described in many ways throughout the years. Each has its merits and brings light to the murky situation of analyzing a concept that has so many intangibles. For our purposes, I’m going to use the formula that I feel best illustrates these hard-to-grasps. Team Canada coach and team leader, Jim Waite, has through the years offered up various formulas for the Performance factor. For our purposes in this article, I will use a modified version of this