How is your program's reputation?

reputation - noun - the beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or something

Does your program's reputation matter?

Quick answer: YES

I am not talking about your reputation, but your program's.

If trophies are your only way of assessing a program and trying to form a reputation, please do me a favour and stop reading now.

People who like working for a company do so because they appreciate how they are treated and respected.  You never (very rarely) hear somebody say "I love working there, we make the best brake drums ever and always within specifications, +/- 0.1mm".

Look at the OSA's Club Excellence Overview.  It does not list anywhere in the criteria "How many Ontario Cups has your club won?"

Your program's good reputation is what will draw quality people to join you.  Your good reputation makes it easier to garner corporate and community support. 

Your reputation needs to be guarded and protected.  It can take years to build, and minutes to destroy.

With a group of wonderful people around me, we coach at Niagara College and we will soon be
making announcements of Fall 2014 recruits.  But will that help our reputation?  It will spread the news that we take our program seriously and that we are fiercely proud to be a part of the Niagara College student experience.  It will also show our current players that we've made an effort to keep the program growing and moving in the right direction.

This all contributes to telling the world of what we are planning to do.

What helps our reputation?  How do our stakeholders, fans and players feel about what's happened?

For our Niagara College Men's and Women's soccer programs, there are many question we need to consider, daily, if we want our program to succeed, including, but not limited to:

• Are the players enjoying themselves?
• Does the program enhance their Niagara College experience?
• Does the program enhance their love of the game and inspire life-long involvement?  
• Is our attitude and philosophy easy to buy in to? 
• Do the players have a sense of ownership of the team?
• Are we credible?
• Is the program organized and delivered professionally?
• Does the program respect the "student" part of the student-athlete equation?
• How do the players feel about the other players we select/recruit?
• Do our players' families trust that their son's or daughter's education is top priority while they are away from home?
• Do our players feel that we care about them, outside of soccer? 
• Have we facilitated non-soccer experiences for them?
• Are we perceived as being accessible to our players?
• Was the program an environment to foster life-long friendships?
• Was the program's environment safe? Inclusive? Respective?
• Do the players enjoy the program enough to refer their friends who are prospective students?
• At the end of the school year or season, do your players feel the program was time well spent?
• Does your vision match the vision of your club/school/employer?
• Does your club/school/employer support your vision?

You can't answer these questions with a definite "yes" or "no".  There are so many players and so many interactions, it would be arrogant (and false) to think you've hit every nail on the head at all times.  And I know, one way or another, I must have upset at least one person everytime we're together.  But what you CAN do is be sincere and work hard to make sure your decisions responsibly serve your players and program.



Do we coach and make decisions to solely serve the projection of a certain reputation?  I would say "no".  You have to be yourself because, sooner or later the real you will pop out.  But if your decisions are sincere, drawn from past mistakes that you've learned from and based on principals that you truly believe in, everybody will be OK. I can tell you that I've seen people make intentional, uncharacteristic decisions that didn't help their reputation at all.  If you're self-aware to the point that you know you don't have the tools to build a good program, recruit the right people to join your program.

You'll notice that my list of questions did not include "competitively, is the program successful?". If you don't take care of all of the non-competitive aspects, your program will not be able to sustain any kind of on-field success.

Be credible, organized, sincere and respectful and your program's reputation will take care of itself.

P.S.  I certainly hope the people who made the brake drums in my car were happy to be at work that day.