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"Do parents still go off? Are there red cards? Do referees get harassed? Of course," Poser says. "But the culture has changed such that, when people act inappropriately, there's a community pressure against it. The Positive Coaching Alliance is part of the lexicon of Santa Cruz County now, and that's the beginning."
A few days after leading the Redwood City workshop, Bob Heckmann sits on a bench in the gorgeous central quad of Mountain View High School, the glass-walled library in front of him, the large Spartan gymnasium to his left; he speaks of the challenges facing a competitive coach who embraces the positive-coaching model. This will be the 43-year-old Heckmann's fourth season as coach of the varsity boys' basketball team, and he has a long history of high-level hoops. Heckmann, thin and lanky with glasses and patches of gray hair, attended tiny Concordia University in Texas on a basketball scholarship when the school was ranked in the Top 20 nationally among junior colleges, and he has been coached by all kinds, from passive enablers to fiery dictators. "I can sit here 25 years later and tell you all about them, I can rip off detail after detail about these guys," says Heckmann, warm and likable with an obvious passion for coaching. "But one of the most profound things I think about is the opportunities these guys missed to be better leaders -- which, in fairness to them, is typical. But it's those kinds of thoughts that drove me to being a coach."
He has overseen a fairly remarkable turnaround at Mountain View: The year before he arrived, the team had seven players and won two games. "The program was completely in the tank," he says, shaking his head and lowering his voice so it won't echo across the quad. "My first year we were terrible. There wasn't a player on this team that could have made my high school team, let alone play on it. There had to be something besides winning that we focused on. I just tried to bring back some interest and passion in the sport, and hopefully not lose quite as badly as they had in the past."
Although his first season saw as many victories (two) as 11-game losing streaks, last year, with talent that does not exactly make Mountain View the powerhouse of the Peninsula, the team played .500 ball and made the league playoffs for the first time in Heckmann's tenure. And Heckmann, who signed up to be a PCA trainer after attending his first workshop, attributes the team's resurgence to the principles Jim Thompson espouses.
"There's no question in my mind that this is applicable to competitive high school sports," Heckmann says. "To me, Jim's genius is taking otherwise self-evident things and kinda putting them all together in this really understandable way that you can use. A lot of coaches might think it's a youth sports thing, not a high school thing. They're totally wrong."
Heckmann admits his approach occasionally riles his assistant coaches, some of whom hail from ultra-competitive basketball backgrounds and don't always appreciate his use of the Magic Ratio (which calls for five pieces of praise for every one bit of disparagement) or the Criticism Sandwich (a method of disguising criticism within two slices of positive reinforcement). "I know how they feel, that I'm too soft sometimes," Heckmann says. "They think, 'If I were the coach right now, I'd bring out the cannons and let 'em have it,' but I just won't do it." Parents, however, have been supportive, which is rare in high school sports, and Heckmann's players say they notice how hard he tries to accentuate the positive.
"Before I came here, I wasn't used to playing organized basketball," says Jonathan Banados, 16, a shooting guard with a few tufts of black hair clinging to his chin. "He's worked with me really hard the past two years to make me an organized player. Other coaches, if you do something bad, they'll run us to death until we get it right. But he doesn't really get mad. You think he's going to yell, but in the end, he's very positive, he's always encouraging."
And although the coaching fraternity has long embraced a certain militaristic tradition, Heckmann says it's the precepts of positive coaching that keep him churning through the long winter basketball seasons.
"I care about giving these guys something more than x's and o's," Heckmann says softly. A bell rings, and within minutes the quad is flooded with students passing from one class to the next; many of the kids stop by to banter briefly with their coach. When the stampede dies down and the kids are out of earshot, Heckmann speaks humbly of the impact he's had on individual players. "A parent pulled me aside after a game late in the season last year -- I didn't know him very well, he was kind of a rough-and-tumble guy. And he said, 'I wanted to tell you what a huge impact you've had on my son's life and how grateful I am he came through this program.' I was completely caught by surprise. It wasn't like I had any special relationship with his son; he was a quiet kid who was only here as a senior. But you talk about feeling validated ....
"Every time you talk to one person, and they buy into positive coaching, you've made an impact," he continues. "The much bigger challenge is stamping this footprint culturally, and that's going to take a long, long time. I just enjoy being part of the process."
