When I was in college, one of my housemates introduced me to the LifeStraw, a portable and highly effective water filter. All I know is it was supposed to be so effective that you could go into the wilderness and find a contaminated water source, and the LifeStraw would give you the ability to drink safely. Very cool and very useful…just not for me. If you ask me, the LifeStraw looks like an incredible product, but I live in a suburban first-world neighborhood. I have a water filter installed under my sink to filter out our tap, which is probably potable anyway. If something goes wrong with our water supply, I have access to a car that can transport me to any number of drink dispensing establishments within minutes. We also don't travel much to places with dangerous water supplies. The LifeStraw is exciting and seems to do its job well, but it is of limited value because it does not solve a problem for me. Effective design is not the same as impactful implementation. This is something to consider when moving forward with a volleyball team. Even a good idea can be limited in its impact if it doesn't address the most significant relevant issues. Luckily, a holistic focus on character tackles one of the biggest AND deepest issues of any group of humans at any given time. Our society is built on some very good ideas. Unfortunately, it is also tainted with some awful ones. What we have is a good historical foundation for human flourishing and some very bad implementations of it. There's an old saying: "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times." I believe there is truth to this. When times get hard, good people with the right ideas stand up and secure the future, often at a high cost. The road they pave sets the stage for prosperity. Those times have an expiration date because fundamental human nature never changes. Most of us stop climbing when given the opportunity. When things are going well, we lean into complacency. We start to think that ease is the natural order of things. We tend not to look back far enough to see the price of our current prosperity. At some point, we become so disconnected from reality that the appetites we develop in abundance tell us that our prosperity is a form of poverty. I can't speak for everyone, but I'm certainly describing many, including myself, who are alive today. We teach kids who are permanently connected to the internet that even though we have more information and resources than any other time in human history if they can't learn something, it's the teacher's fault. Any time they perform poorly, it's due to difficult circumstances. When students are unhappy with a teacher or coach, parents come in to advocate for their child's happiness. Covid-19 caution at school has become endless fear and sometimes pointless precaution for many students. Authenticity is more important than virtue because virtue requires the judgment that one thing is better than another and everyone is wonderfully unique. When teens need a strong guiding hand, we hand them cell phones and tell ourselves that independence teaches responsibility. I haven't even mentioned our morally bankrupt pop culture or the fact that we preach values to our athletes and then excuse famous athletes for poor values because they've earned that right by being good athletes. I could go on and on. It's not that every sentiment above is entirely wrong or unhelpful, but collectively, it's a recipe for disaster. We are producing young people who not only crumble under pressure but learn to blame everyone and everything else for their own shortcomings. We teach them shortsightedness that obscures their true potential and any possibility of achieving it. We're preparing them for a life of fighting to stay miserable. As a parent, educator, and concerned citizen, this is disheartening. As a coach, this is an opportunity. I believe that this cultural rot has real consequences. It starts as an abstract discussion but works its way up through a system to the surface. Why is character the way? Because character is always a problem. Even when it's not, it takes effort to maintain. I've been involved in high school volleyball since I started playing back in 1999. High-level play is still a great place to be, but we're mostly worse the rest of the way down. Old coaches complain about a lack of commitment and work ethic, and referees note more long games because the players goof off and can't focus. We teach players to beg, argue, and make up calls for points. Coaches say they want their players to stay tough and have integrity. We want them to work hard and show commitment. We want them to be excellent and demonstrate disciplined behavior. We want them to do all that, but it has to be fun, and anything that's missing can be picked up in the gym on a volleyball court. In context, much of it is nonsense. Saying all of those things is not the same as promoting them. This is not to say that no coaches do this well or that I've figured it all out. As a society, our insistence on calling everything racist, bigoted, or -phobic and our refusal to speak with precision or rationality about principles in any other way pushes us further and further from the ideals we speak of (if we even understand what we mean by them). C.S. Lewis describes this as the "the tragi-comedy of our situation — we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." Thinking through the lens of character and values is not an alternative perspective to justify sports when you lose. Better character is fertile ground for a better player. When you seek to win the right way, you eventually improve your odds further than you would otherwise, and when you do win, it means more. If I'm right, then it is not the case that there are too many coaches copping out of running a serious powerhouse volleyball program. Instead, there aren't enough going all in on a sound philosophy of training up mature young men and women. To me, the timing for this bet has never looked better.
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