One of the biggest messages I wanted to convey to our team during the first time I met with them was that as of that moment, Concordia Basketball is a first class program. I don't believe in giving a half-hearted effort to anything, and won't accept my team to give a half-hearted effort. Anything I am in involved with or put my name on will either be done the right way or it won't be done at all, and the same goes for our team. Everything we do, we will do to the best of our ability; the uniforms, travel gear, practice gear, etc. that we wear will be of the best quality. I learned a long time ago that everything about you says something about you. So, if our entire program is going to be about excellence then we can't talk about being excellent at practice if we don't have excellent uniforms or we don't have excellent communication.
Having said that, there needs to be an understanding of "doing more with less" and the realization that some sacrifices will have to be made. If we are going to have the best travel gear, that might mean we have to eliminate something else that we could have gotten but it would have been below-average. I think a great parallel here is the classroom and academic load. Isn't it better to take 12 credits and get all A's instead of taking 18 credits and getting all Cs? Do more with less! Sure, we would all like to have everything AND have it all be the best; but that is usually not possible. Anytime I have to decide between a lot of average things or a few great things, it's a very easy decision for me.
The best part about us working towards being a first class program is that I'm at a University where the administration wants that as well. Many of the factors required to run an excellent program are out of my and the players' hands. A great example of this happened on Wednesday. Our entire athletic department spent the morning going through many of the offices, facilities, and storage spaces. We cleaned and organized some areas, we got rid of a lot of some stuff that is no longer needed, and we made notes of ways to improve and upgrade our facilities - both in the short and long term. Concordia is really committed to improving the university in variety of areas and it was an exciting reminder of the vision I get to be part of.
I spent the rest of the afternoon Wednesday on the same theme. I put together some notes and got pricing information on a variety of upgrades for the office, locker room and program in general. Nothing has been ordered just yet, but I am excited about some really great upgrades that will soon be added to Concordia Basketball!
ALL IN
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