The Locker Room. Damon West

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       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:

      ISBN 9781119897842 (cloth)

      ISBN 9781119897866 (ePub)

      ISBN 9781119897873 (ePDF)

      COVER ART & DESIGN: PAUL McCARTHY

       I dedicate this to my father, Bob West. As a sports writer, you used sports to teach me many valuable life lessons. I still look up to you today, just as I did when I was a kid.

       Love,

       Damon

       I dedicate this to my bride, Teressa. Thank you for your love, support, humility, and grace.

       Love,

       Stephen

Preface

      At the heart of coaching is a deep-rooted commitment to helping people become the best versions of themselves. The role of a coach is to see the potential in people and then do everything within their power to help them get there. As a coach, you're less concerned with the end goal—although every coach wants to win!—and more concerned with the progress your athletes make.

      Great coaches, as with other great leaders, must be willing to give the best of themselves to set the example for the cultures they wish to build. In that spirit—to give our best to help you become your best—we have created a short story about a team, hurt and divided, which needed the Locker Room to help them heal, unite, and overcome.

      Before entering the Locker Room, we would like to offer some insight into a few of the choices made.

We chose the Locker Room as the location of this story because we both have experienced the power of the Locker Room in sports. We are both former athletes (we won't talk about who was the better athlete) and have seen the Locker Room break down barriers and transform lives. While the Locker Room is a physical place for athletes, it has its analogues for students in a classroom, executives in a boardroom, workers in any workplace, service men and women in the Armed Forces, and people in their communities. The Locker Room can be made up of 100 people or just two people sitting across from each other.

      The Locker Room is anywhere that:

      1 People from different backgrounds, with different hurts, hang-ups, and histories come together for a common goal.

      2 The standard is the standard, and it isn't lowered because of talent, position, or for short-term gain.

      3 Diversity of skill, ability, and personality aren't challenges to overcome, but the very strengths that will allow a team to overcome any challenge.

      4 Making a mistake doesn't make you a mistake.

      5 Hard days are endured; hard conversations are engaged; hard truths are received; hard consequences grow into encouragement to become your best.

      6 Success of the individual is always secondary to the success of the team.

      Sports felt an appropriate setting for our story because sports has the power to transcend boundaries; the lessons learned in sports eclipse athletics, helping people become the fullness of who they were created to be.

People from different backgrounds come together in the Locker Room to unite around a common goal. The Locker Room is the setting to engage in difficult conversations about race and discrimination because these are issues that coaches, athletes, leaders, and companies are seeking to address.

      The ideas discussed in this story can help anyone begin the conversation toward healing and unity.

      We believe that the path to reach our full potential is by people gathering together in their own “Locker Rooms” and having hard, but fruitful conversations, with humility and grace.

      The Locker Room is a story about building great culture: your team, organization, or business will be able to immediately apply these principles and grow as a result.

      The Locker Room is a story about the importance of great character and a challenge to never let your talent outrun your character. But most of all, The Locker Room is a story about the power that each one of us has to make a difference in our own Locker Room, when we choose to give our best for the best of someone else.

      Of course, you don't have to be an athlete, or former athlete, for this story to impact you. You just have to be willing to listen.

      With humility and grace,

       Damon West and Stephen Mackey

Prologue The Lifetime Achievement Award

      The banquet hall at the Berry Center was packed. Coaches, family, media, even the governor had gathered from across the state for the annual Hall of Honor Banquet. Jokingly called “The Ball Coaches’ Ball,” this was where the best of the best received the ultimate accolades each year. The highest honor, presented at the end, was the Award for Lifetime Achievement.

      The winner this year was James Edward Smith.

      Coach Smith, known to former players, fellow coaches, reporters, colleagues, and even his own wife as “Coach Smitty,” was an exceptional coach. For over 35 years he had served as the head coach of the Tigers of Northwest High School, one of the most successful football teams in the history of the state. It was a surprise to no one that Coach Smitty won this award. Aside from being one of the winningest coaches in the history of the state, his achievement was indeed for his lifetime as a coach: he had just retired after coaching his final season.

      Tonight would be Coach Smitty's swan song.

Coach Smitty was a coach who had created a culture of success from his staff and his players. More than three decades earlier, he had written his Six Pillars core values for his team, but when those players graduated, they took the Pillars into other walks of life. Soon, Coach Smitty's tenets were studied by coaching staffs of every sport, at every level. Corporate CEOs would even travel to his annual coaching clinic at Northwest High School to learn from him and see if some of his “magic” would rub off on them.

      But it was not magic or alchemy that made him one of the winningest coaches in history. It was his authentic vulnerability. “Authentic vulnerability,” he would tell anyone who would listen, “is a strength. By letting your guard down and exposing yourself—with all of your flaws—you can then become that servant leader whom others will want to follow.”

      Over his storied career, Coach Smitty also endured controversy, especially when it came to his faith. To him, it was worth the flak to instill spiritual principles in the hearts and minds of the boys he would have for four years.