By Alex Perry

You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

I’ve heard this phrase millions of times throughout my life and never really put much thought into it other then what it says.  Here at OU we are at a crossroads with our team (yet again) where motivating the team is the next step for us after two huge losses and an overall disappointing season.

And all we have left is 9 practices and 4 games… 13 more times to strap on the pads until the 2009 campaign is over for the Sooners of Oklahoma.

The team has a long break due to spring break being next week (3/16-20) so with this comes no practice for a week and back-to-back bye weeks.   Well, it is more like two weeks of no practice due to people not showing up last week and then being off next.  From a coaching stand point (and after observing the three past seasons as a captain), this terrifies me.  This 12 day layoff has killed us and any momentum we have had in the past.  Historically the odds are not in our favor.

To try and combat the notorious spring break killer, we are having an all hands “come to Jesus” meeting on the Monday once everyone gets back from spring break.   I would love to release my strategy in what I am planning to say, but knowing some of my guys read this I’m not going to spoil their fun.

But, I will be drawing a line in the sand that night for the rest of the season.  I will be that bold to even tell people to walk if they are not on board because I have seen first hand how we have gone from rags to riches and have a wonderful thing in our grasps. To have people give up on themselves, their teammates, and the program is an absolute atrocity, and I do not want those people around me.

This brings us to a very fundamental, million dollar question: How do you motivate people or inspire them into action?  I actually have had a few good talks with many people from my dad and other family, to past coaches, to even an executive VP of a major corporation on how do achieve this.  Basically from what I have gathered I need to create the vision, get people to trust in me, get people to buy into the vision and plan, and then execute the move from A to B through a series of controls and structures that OU Lacrosse thankfully already has in place.

How this is done is still another question.  I have a basic plan of action that seems to change daily, but thankfully have a little over a week to figure it out.  My professor of my “Management of a Sales Force” class gave me his copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People book to keep me busy while on spring break.  He claims that all of my answers are in there.

If there is any other help out there, I am open to anything.  Not out of desperation, but simply due to a yearning to be better in any way, and the awareness and appreciation of those out there who  might of already walked the path I am just now starting down.  I am personally of the mentality that if you cease learning you cease being good.  So bring it on.

So at that meeting, come hell or high water I will bring the horse to the water and find a way to make it drink if it’s the last thing I do.  After putting in the past 4 years of my heart and soul into this program, I will not allow the team to self-destruct and become the laughing stock of the Lone Star Alliance.  I will hire Keanu Reeves from The Replacements to come give us some deep inspiration if it will work.  (Thanks to Mike Band of Idaho for this idea, if it works everyone owes him a drink!)

The Sooners have lost their vision, but we will persevere and gain it back.  It is just a shame for this to happen in the middle of a season.

Alex Perry is the founder of the OU lacrosse program.  Perry will be blogging about life in the remote lacrosse outpost known as Oklahoma this spring in his final season, and attempting to graduate from college with marketing and management degrees next December.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Alex Perry, Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.