This year, Homewood’s headlining quarterback, agile wrestler, tumbling cheerleader, pinpoint bowler and diving volleyball player will all have one thing in common: they’ll all be great teammates.
That’s the goal, anyway, of the athletics department’s newlook leadership program that will emphasize that “Great Teams Have Great Teammates.” Freshman athletes will hit the ground running in September with the Leadership Academy, engaging in conversation with their peers in group discussion led by upperclassmen who have proven to be strong leaders in their time at Homewood.
For athletic director Rick Baguley, he wanted a clear, simple mantra that could apply to all athletes at the school and would make a lasting impact on them.
“The last thing I wanted was to add something that was just another list of things for our athletes to remember,” he said.
Baguley organized a committee of coaches from all sports that met at the end of the last school year and again over the summer to share and discuss core values of their programs, with an aim of identifying values that unite all athletics in the school. The “Great Teams Have Great Teammates” slogan simply encompassed everything.
“If somebody is able to walk out of here after being a part of Homewood athletics… and say ‘I learned a lot about what it means to be a great teammate in my four years here,’ that’ll make me proud as an athletic director,” Baguley said.
The goal of athletics at Homewood is not just to make kids better athletes, but to teach them life skills they can use in professional, community and family settings. Baguley said that’s true for him as well, not just the student athletes.
“I’ve got to try to be a great teammate to my wife, to my kids, to my neighbor, and when I come to school,” Baguley said.
Furthermore, Keith Brown, assistant baseball coach for 29 years and coaching mentor, explained their new leadership program which plans to develop athletes’ soft skills.
Freshman and sophomore athletes will meet once a month in small-group settings with their peers. Several upperclassmen and a coach will help facilitate conversations on the core values of being great teammates and strong leaders.
Brown said he believes this type of cooperation is a key component of team sports.
“I think a lot of times in youth sports, the kids are thinking about themselves and their performance,” Brown said. “But when you get to the upper levels, it’s about how everybody works together and how everybody’s performance plays off of each other.”
This new leadership program will work in conjunction with the Team Homewood program, organized by coach Carol Chesnutt, which selects two juniors from each sport and takes them through a specific curriculum to build leadership skills. Juniors going through Team Homewood will mentor freshmen athletes while seniors who graduated from Team Homewood program will mentor sophomores.
This creates a feedback loop where students learn how to be a leader from their upperclassmen, and then teach the younger grades when they are juniors and seniors.
