Why Does the Varsity Team Lose to the Jv Team?

1. Why does the Varsity team lose to the JV team?

The reason that the Varsity team lost to the JV team is the lack of working together as a team. Even though the varsity team consisted of the best individuals for speed, strength, coordination, and endurance, they lacked the cohesiveness to perform as a team unit. Each of the eight individual rowers had to be single-mindedly attuned to one another in order to synchronize their rowing and perform in unison. Unfortunately, the team also had too many disruptors and lacked a leader. As the team continued to lose, so did their team spirit. Rowers internalized their feelings only to lose all respect, trust, confidence and ability in each other. Their personalities began to clash, making it even more difficult to work together as a team. Instead of the rowers individually accepting the blame, the eight-member team started lashing out and blaming each other for the mistakes, only lessening their chances at winning.

2. What should Coach P. have done differently earlier in the season to resolve this problem? At exactly what point should he have intervened differently?

Coach P. when selecting the rowers for the two teams should have looked at both the psychological (personality types and traits, if they were leaders or followers etc.) as well as the physical aspects (strength, speed, stamina, coordination etc.) of each individual. The coach should have experimented more by creating different scenarios to see how well the individuals responded and performed to one another in different situations when it came to a team environment. For example, putting the rowers in total control of the team's dynamics is the best hands on lesson they could ever experience. This would have allowed the rowers a deeper understanding of what it takes to be a winner from a loser. Experimenting would eventually uncover the leaders from the followers to the doers and the disruptors. The end result of this might produce two very strong teams. After all what good is having the strongest and fastest team if the team is not willing to work together incorporating and using their abilities, skills and talents to their best possible advantage. Coach P. should have intervened immediately after the first week instead of waiting until the end of the season. If the coach had polled the team early on for feedback and input on resolving the problems and issues, the result might not have escalated the way it did. For example, the coach could have let the rowers experiment with seat positioning during training to define and expose their strengths and weakness along with their capabilities in their positions by granting them some independence within training. In addition, by having the two team's race against each other only did more damage than good since the JV team kept beating the Varsity team whereas if they raced separately against the clock.

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