[quote=Cokeley.

I have never heard a HS wrestler say, when asked about his wrestling performance, say I lost my match but it is okay because I saved some points and my team won the dual because of it. MOTIVATION is direction and intensity. You are going to have a hard time with human nature convincing young men to lose when they could have won just so a team could win a dual. You are better off having all of your wrestlers focused on winning their matches at the weight they earned the right to wrestle.

What are you teaching a kid? "I am the coach. I am the authority and you have no right to challenge my decision. I decide what is most important and your opinion does not matter! I am the almighty coach, bow to me!" I am certainly happy that I have never dealt with a coach like that. It wouldn't have been pretty.

I am going to have to say it is more logically an individual sport where individual performances determine a team score. [/quote]

I think you hit the key word "Teach". From the beginning of the season, we taught the importance of the team. We taught them that there will be times in life that things don't always seem fair but you do them for a reason. You ever had a boss tell you to do something you didn't want to do? Have you ever had the opportunity to help someone else knowing that is might actually set you back temporairly? Those are decisions we or at least I have dealt with most of my adult life and I tried to explain that to my athletes. Would I ever sacrifice their position in a tournament, no way, but you would be amazed how much of that team attitude comes out even in a tournament. The carry over is having a kid strive for the bonus win to get the extra team points, when he had the match won and could of just sat back and say "what do I care, I'm winning my match."

When you get kids thinking about "Team" you will have a team. Hopefully, my former wrestlers would agree that they did understand authority, respect and discipline, but their respect came from what they were being taught not because of a position I held. They realized if they were being moved in a weight class it was because I had confidence in them to do a job that no one else on the team could fulfill as well as them. They didn't always like their assignment at the time but if they accepted the challenge, I feel they became stronger because of it. I think Shawn related many of the same points when he talked about his Army "brainwashing" as you called it.