Message from Brett McCall

[Slade]

Ben and the Clemson Men's Ultimate Team:

Thank you all for doing such diligent work last weekend. Continue to
do the work and I will be looking for stories about your journey
throughout the season. Ben asked me to address the Space City model
with you all and I did some of that at Lunch, but not everyone was at
the table. Let this be my talk at a distance.

I recommend the Clemson Men's Ultimate team look into the research
from the Space City Ultimate team's Great Experiment! See:
http://spacecity.houstonultimate.org/about_the_club for more
information on the overview of what this is all about.
In addition, I HIGHLY recommend a team review of this interview:
http://skydmagazine.com/2011/02/space-city-ultimate-sean-mccall-podcast/


Here is the bottom line, you all are learning that its YOU who has to
make the difference on the team, you can't count on the someone with a
title of Coach, Captain, Senior, Junior..etc, to show you what to do!
You got to be the man. The majority of the time will be spent
following GREAT leadership which has nothing to do with title and
everything to do with clear often innovative thinking (see this 4
minute talk about the importance of following the leader:
http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html).

Ultimately you want to become a team of leaders who can operate
independently while completely aligned with the team's mission. Its a
challenging balance to strike, one that I am richly passionate about!!
Use me as a resource.

I am recommending you adopt 2 structures that will change the way each
of you interact with the team: (1) The SuperClub - build an
understanding that the entire club improving will make a far stronger
force than any single squad of players; and (2) Committees. Now,
personally, I hate the word committee because it has nasty
connotations of longwinded meetings and politics.. barf. So, I like to
call these Toons (which I am stealing from Orson Scott Card's story of
Ender's Game).

These are areas you might consider building Toons/Committees around:
Strategy, Recruiting, Accounting & Administration, Video & Records,
Logistics, Team Selection, Grievance, Keeper of the W.A.H. ...whatever
works best for Clemson 2012.


Regarding the SuperClub Roster - You will need a mix of players who's
mission it will be to select the best mix of players for each of the
squads to be sent to each tournament. Base this selection on a
transparent and objective process that highlights each players
strengths for why you are selecting them to play on which team. You
can take all kinds of strategies: Removing "star" players in order to
get the bulk of the team to rise up and perform better to overcome the
perceived deficit; or Adding players purely based on potential;
Bringing a younger player from the top of the roster to work on
leadership skills with a younger team. Ultimately, you are looking to
breed team chemistry throughout the program in order to MAXIMIZE the
performance of the entire roster.

I am out of touch with the College series and rankings and such, but
you will need to identify what games actually count for ranking and
learn to develop a strategy that MILKS every last drop of growth out
of the opportunity.

The whole team should be looking to improve. And, as I said last
Saturday, the larger the gap between the results you want and the
results you are actually getting is directly proportional to the
available improvement in that experience. You need to HUNGER for these
experiences and relish in them... that means SEEK TO FAIL, not by
sabotage but by EXPANDING beyond what you previously thought possible.
Become rigorous with your SELF and each other and learn to identify
fails often. Develop a healthy relationship with failing by seeing
that you are improving your performance with each step. This is a
weapon that will build resilience and a never-ending improvement
attitude which can and will turn potentially losing scenarios into
GREAT victories!

I hope that is helpful, rock it this season and please keep me posted
on the season.

Game on!

Brett