Morgan Wooten Coaching Concepts

1. Never lose sight of the impact you are having on young people’s lives.


2. Teach your players the importance of proper priorities that allow for maximum personal, academic, and athletic development.

3. Evaluate wins and losses objectively, focusing more on effort and execution than on the outcome of the game.

4. Instruct, don’t dictate.

5. Never humiliate.

6. Communicate your approach in a style that is comfortable to you and fits your personality and philosophy.

7. Learn to anticipate problems.

8. Never announce penalty for rule violations in advance.

9. Enthusiasm creates heroism.

10. If you make a mistake and fall down, you must get back up.

11. Always have a “Thought for the Day.”

12. You are constantly being judged on what you are doing and not what you have done.

13. Be yourself.

14. Be eager to learn.

15. Don’t play players only because they have potential if they do not hustle, work hard, and listen.

16. Never discipline to punish, discipline to teach.

17. We are what we continually do.

18. Do to your opponent what you do not like done to you.

19. Play defense with your feet, eyes, and heart.

20. If you want the attention of your players, use compliments.

21. I believe that repetition of fundamentals at any level will make your players winners.

22. Play hard, play smart, play together, and have fun.

23. You must have total control of your program.

24. I will never curse my players, and they will never curse me.

25. I will never embarrass my players, and they will never embarrass me.

26. Do not assume anything.

27. Listen and learn from your players.

28. Excellence becomes a habit.

29. Don’t ever tell your players to win.

30. Never write a plan for practice that takes longer than two hours.

31. Make your players sprint over to you to begin practice on a hustling, enthusiastic note.

32. Inch by inch, life’s a cinch. Yard by yard, it’s really hard.

33. Take time to talk individually with the players you are cutting.

34. Have your players write down their academic and athletic goals at the start of every year.

35. Building team chemistry is the most important thing you can do as a coach