I worked for a crazy man.
Or at least that’s what most people called him.
The crazy man’s name was Coach Z, and he was the head coach of Seward County Community College. Z stood 6’6, was bald, and had tattoos on his body. He’d often coach basketball in jeans and an Affliction t-shirt. He dabbled in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Coach Z was also the first person that I had ever heard used the phrase, “Burn the boats.”
The use of the term associated with a no turning back attitude was at a critical moment of what would be the most successful season in Seward County’s basketball history. A moment where the team was ready to turn on both of us, and the fans and supporters alike started to question what we were doing as leaders of the team.
To be transparent, Z and I had even questioned the best approach. That’s part of what led us to this moment.
We’ll dive into the story around burning the boats, and how it can help you in life, but first some back story around why that moment was so important for this historically successful season.
Coach Z’s first big decision was to hire an assistant coach to help him turn around one of the most prestigious junior college basketball programs in the country.
Seward County had fallen on hard times, even though they still possessed a talented roster. They needed a new staff, some new players, and a new perspective on how to find success.
After some back and forth I received a call from Z, accepted his offer, and moved my stuff from Arizona to western Kansas to help him recruit and coach the Seward County Saints.
Coach Z and I proceeded to assemble a talented roster that included players from as far as Serbia, Brazil, New Jersey, Oregon and California.
We had players from Kanas to support the roster, and a really good point guard from Kansas City, Missouri.
The squad was complete.
We had good size with two 6’9 players, and the Serbian was 6’10. Those three were all monsters on the inside, and possessed the ability to score and rebound around the basket.
To compliment the dominant big men we surrounded them with really good three-point shooters.
On offense, we were tough to beat.
The area we struggled most was on defense—but more specifically, with our minds. Those two areas needed desperate help and were intimately connected.
However, the defense couldn’t be fixed until the mindset was fixed. Here’s why.
Change is hard. We talk about that a lot in this space.
In order to change you have to be willing to do things in a way you’ve never done them before. After all, that’s how growth takes place.
You push harder. You run faster. You become tougher. The changes your mind and body start to experience are difficult to accept.
Those changes will deliver you some scars along the way. That’s why we resist, even when we know it probably IS better for us.
But whether you are in the workplace, or on a junior college basketball team, you don’t like being forced to reach the heights of your potential. As humans we are resistant to the painful work it takes to become our best.
Our way works fine, we think, and it has gotten us to this point. Why do we need to listen to someone else telling us how to do things? What do they know that I don’t?
And as leaders or coaches we cannot prove our way will work until you try it, but why would you try it until I can prove to you it works?
You must establish trust, rapport, and show them we loved them and wanted the best for them.
Coach Z and I were doing our best to establish love and rapport, but the reality is we were asking these young men to take a leap of faith.
That leap is even more difficult when you take over a losing culture, like Coach Z and I did at Seward.
You have to help the players to unlearn losing habits. That’s difficult for us as adults. It’s even harder to do with 17 to 20-year-olds.
Attention to detail like touching the line when you run, or jump stopping when you catch the ball, often get lost at this level. That’s why most players, and in turn teams, fail.
Another form of attention to detail is listening, and then trying your best to do exactly what the coaches tell you to do.
We hammered the attention to detail, and respect to teammates and coaches, to strengthen the mind. That included sprints, push-ups, trust falls, and all kinds of team-building activities—some fun, some the opposite of fun.
But their mindset was changing. We were almost there.
Circling back to where we started, or on offense, we were good there. Get it inside, kick it out for threes, and the opponent has to pick its poison.
But on defense, we were trying a very unique defense called a match-up zone. It’s also been called an amoeba. This defense is shapeless, and requires extreme communication and effort.
The players have to be able to guard all positions, and their match-up may change every time down the floor.
A common misconception of zone defense is it’s easier to play as compared to basketball’s standard man-to-man defense, but in my opinion it’s much harder to do well.
Coach Z and I were trying to integrate this new, and difficult defense, with our team.
It started well! We began the season with 12 wins and two losses. That’s good!
But then we moved into conference play and Seward County plays in arguably the toughest conference in the country—the Jayhawk Conference.
We on our first game in double overtime, and then lost our next two games giving up 80+ points in both of them. And as we traveled home from starting the conference 1-2 the heat was turned up even more on our lack of results.
Coach Z and I had multiple lengthy discussions about going back and forth between man-to-man, and match-up zone, before finally we sat down and said we have to pick a lane.
We felt good about the offense. But if we wanted our team to believe in the defense then it had to start with us as leaders. No more waffling, we decided. We’re going with the match-up zone for the rest of the season.
Coach Z always met with the team before practice in our locker room, and we’d talk about our goals for the day. I’d follow in behind.
On this day, the day after we started the conference with one win and two losses, Z kicked open the door and said, “Burn the boats!”
Everyone stared confused.
Z proceeded to tell the story of past war experts like Hernan Cortez, and Sun Tsu, who had found centuries before that by removing the doubt in their soldier’s mind that they were staying, and fighting, it led to more success as an army.
The same needed to be the case for our Seward team, and the same can be said in your life. Remove all doubt from your decision, and then watch what happens when you do.
Unconsciously, our basketball team did not give it’s best effort because they could always fall back on the option that we could try man-to-man defense if the zone wasn’t working.
If man defense wasn’t working we could go back to zone. Therefore, neither defense was great.
Another issue that came up would be four players on the court of the five would do their job perfectly, but one man would lose focus or break down and they would score.
Everyone must be completely bought in. Everyone must do their job.
Once we burned the boats, we became one of the best defenses in the country.
The team now had belief defensively and mentally, the offense kept humming, and we won 20 of our next 22 games. One of those two losses was in the final four to the eventual national champion.
We won the third place game by 18 points and finished with a record of 32-6.
That team shattered shooting records and is still one of the fan favorites in the team’s history. It was a remarkable turnaround in just one season. (Look at all the 2007-08 records!)
My question to you, then, is where in your life are you unconsciously letting doubt seep in? Where are you afraid to burn the boats, even though doing so will remove doubt, get you out of your comfort zone, and push you past your limits?
That may be internally, or with those around you, but you must remove all doubt.
There’s balance here, of course. Occasionally we have to stop the insanity of doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
More likely, however, we stop just before the breakthrough occurs. It feels too hard, or we want to see results faster, so we quit.
Persistence and intelligent effort will usually equal success.
Take some time today to reflect and see where you need to push harder, and where you need to eliminate doubt in yourself and your abilities.
You deserve the success you desire. Remember to keep the mindset that you are on the right path, and your doing the right things the right way.
Do that and the universe will take care of the rest for you.
In honor of burn the boats here’s a couple fire songs for you!