Halftime Adjustments

If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you will keep getting what you have been getting….

If you are achieving desired outcomes, maintain your course.  If not, adjustments need to be made.  This is true for every aspect of life as well as in football games.

Halftime provides coaches an opportunity to make those adjustments.  Our defensive staff takes a great deal of pride in their meticulous preparation for games, but sometimes teams just don’t do what you prepared for or they add something that your players have not been trained to defend.  Our defensive staff at St Johnsbury Academy has done an outstanding job of making adjustments at halftime and communicating them to our players in a manner that allows them to rapidly and successfully implement those changes with great success.

During our recent Vermont North v South Senior Bowl, playing under rules heavily favoring the offense, the North squad, coached by our coaching staff and a few coaches from another area school, scored with 1 second left in the first half and went into the locker room up 35-28.    We were in need of some adjustments to stop a few plays our opponents were having success with.  We discussed adjustments as a staff, communicated them to our players, even demonstrated them in the gym, then went out and executed them.  The result…we held the South squad to only one second-half touchdown on a drive that was aided by two 15-yard penalties.  Final score, 56-35 in favor of the North.

Football games allow for a scheduled time to evaluate success.  The scoreboard and first half statistics provide a clear picture for you to measure whether you are achieving objectives.  Measuring success in life is often not so clear.

The measure of success in life is not your job title, size of your house, or car you drive. You need to define success with what holds real meaning in your life. For me, it’s relationships and making a difference in people’s lives.  I don’t say this to suggest yours should be the same as mine, but rather to show I have priorities and think we all should take stock of what is important to us.

In my opinion, chasing material things, even when they are successfully acquired, do not necessarily lead happiness.  Disappointment will inevitably come when the newness wears off.   I firmly believe making an impact on lives and having good relationships at work and in personal life are the greatest measures of success.  If you are not achieving your goals and objectives, make adjustments now and don’t wait until halftime. Unlike a football game, our lives don’t offer a clock on the scoreboard.