As an administrator, it can sometimes be difficult to encourage your coaches to focus on character education in their day-to-day coaching routine. Although it can be tough to enforce, education is a crucial part of team culture.

Culture is defined as, “the way we do things here.” All organizational cultures are built as a blend of explicit and implicit (or hidden) expectations. This gives us two important goals in establishing our cultural norms: We must explicitly articulate what our most critical norms are, and we must fearlessly assess whether some of our implicit norms are at odds with what we really want. It may help to assess the current culture as if you were a brand new family entering the program for the first time.

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In the video below, Steve Kryger, Athletic Director at Menlo-Atherton (California) High School, talks about how he makes sure players and coaches are focused on character education. He attends practices and games for all teams when possible to make sure he's encouraging the right type of culture.

When he sees something that does not fit into the culture, he will pull the coach or student to the side after practice to give them a friendly reminder about what the program stands for. He then sees how players and coaches behave during intense games to ensure they continue to practice good character through all circumstances.

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By creating a climate that is positive and encouraging for your student-athletes, we find this to be the ideal caring climate for success. While an athlete's performance and enjoyment goes up on the field, we found that athletes’ behavior, attitude and happiness also increased outside of sports. This is true for the whole team, leading to better performance for everyone.

The better the climate and the more focused the organization is on character education, the more likely it is that your student-athletes will be successful on and off the playing field.

Steve Kryger is an Athletic Director at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, California. Kryger has been at M-A since 2008, also teaching math and coaching boys' lacrosse. Prior to M-A, he coached basketball at a multitude of high schools in the Bay Area, and was named San Mateo County Girls' Basketball Coach of the Year in 2000 and again in 2008. In 2017, Kryger and Co-AD Paul Snow were named the Northern California Girls and Boys Athletic Directors of the Year by the California Coaches Association (CCA).

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