Wooden Wins! - Reliability
Our Pyramid of Success focus this month will be on Fight. At American Heritage Charter Schools, we celebrate the core value of “Working Hard”.

Do You Have the Fight to Be the Best You Can Be?
By Craig Impelman

On the left side of the Pyramid of Success, below faith, there are four additional pieces of mortar: ambition, adaptability, resourcefulness and fight. These are qualities that encompass the resolve, ingenuity and resilience of the human spirit.

In his book Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, with Jay Carty, Coach Wooden defined fight and its importance in the following manner:

Fight is a determined effort to do the very best we can do…. It’s digging in, gritting our teeth, standing our ground.

When we have fight, we are always ready to respond. We are quick, but we don’t hurry. We make fewer mistakes because we have the level of our intensity under control. A player with fight has a contained fire burning in his or her belly. This emerges as focused passion. Players with fight never lose a game; they just run out of time.

Perhaps I should have chosen a different word. Fight has some negative connotations that I don’t want to communicate. In no way is this mortar quality about an opponent. There was a time when I would talk about ‘being better than the opponent.’ I don’t anymore. Make no mistake; I always want to win, but I never fight with an opponent. My fight is within me—it is the struggle to be the best I can be at whatever I do.

There is no such thing as losing when we’ve made the effort to do the best we can. If we use our fight and determination to do our best, success will take care of itself.

Under each piece of mortar on the Pyramid, in parentheses, there is some brief application advice or a description of that mortar. In the original Pyramid under fight, Coach wrote, “effort and hustle.” Later, when Coach revised and perfected the Pyramid, he changed the description to read, “determined effort.” Coach’s motivation for the change was clear. He wanted to make certain we understood that just making an effort was not real fight. Fight isn’t about simply expending energy; it’s about determination, which is having a fixed purpose or fixation of will. This clear sense of purpose is a key adjective for the kind of fight Coach believed in. It means that this effort has a “never say never” attitude attached to it.

Fight is one of the pieces of mortar that holds the pyramid block of competitive greatness in place. When we have fight and competitive greatness, we are not fearful of adversity, nor are we deterred when we face it.

A person who has fight is following two great pieces of advice from Coach Wooden:

“The person who is afraid to risk failure seldom has to face success.”

“The person who is not afraid of failure seldom has to face it.”

Coach described adversity this way: “Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.”

Fight enables us to rise to the occasion—and that’s a pretty good trait for any character!

Key Idea: “The person who is afraid to risk failure seldom has to face success.”

@Home 

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” -Winston Churchill.  Enthusiasm is an incredibly valuable tool that helps develop perseverance and motivation in our children. Watch this video on enthusiasm and discuss how a positive attitude and seeing the best in situations can bring joy to everything we do. Enthusiasm colors our world! This month let's encourage our kids to work towards dreams, keep persevering, never give up and live life to the fullest!

 

On Campus

What are you determined to do?  What are you fighting for right now?  Whatever it is, don’t give up!  Watch this video to help fuel your fire!  

In the Class

Video for grades K-6th 

    Determination (Thomas the Train)

Videos for grades 7th-12th

    Fight  (1min)

     The Mindset of a Winner (11 min)

Discuss how fight and determination affect the outcomes of your decisions.  How does fight and determination create more opportunities for you, make you stronger, etc?  What does fight and determination look like if your life?  What does it look like in the classroom?  What would change if you had more fight and determination?

 

On the Field

Discuss: What does determination look like on the field? How can we encourage our teamates in their determination? Talk about a time where you or someone else showed great determination.

Action: With your team, split up into groups of 4 or 5 (depending on numbers you can do smaller groups). Then, have each group come up with 3 team goals and 3 individual goals. Spend some time writing these goals on a board and discussing them with your team. Finally, talk about the action steps that need to happen in order for your team to achieve these goals. 

Watch: https://youtu.be/vihMW12GTb0