A Blueprint for Turning Around a Struggling Program, Article Review Example

Overview

Michael Austin’s article, “A Blueprint for Turning Around a Struggling Program”, documents the strategies and eventual success of Andy Fleming, a new coach for the Xavier Musketeers men’s soccer team.   Beginning with an overview of the team’s less than illustrious history, Austin proceeds to introduce Fleming and discuss his approach for the 2010 season, which marked Fleming’s first time in the role of head coach.  Before going into the methods employed by Fleming, Austin sets out his accomplishment: by the close of the 2010 season, the team was ranked in the Atlantic Tournament Top Ten,, had won ten games, and was boasting a majority of players with grade point averages of 3.0 or higher.

Drawing extensively on Fleming’s own words, Austin conveys the recent history of the Musketeers, with an emphasis on their inability to achieve success on the field.  Through Fleming’s perceptions, the article establishes that the team suffered from a pervasive lack of spirit, and one seemingly perpetuated by the losses sustained.  This, it is made clear, was the challenge confronting Fleming when the Cincinnati, Ohio, school brought him aboard.  From here, Austin’s trajectory goes into a more complete description of the Musketeers prior to Fleming’s arrival, and then discusses the “blueprint” devised by him to turn the situation around.  Following this, the plan’s implementation is laid out, with a time-line revealing increasing success and an over-all more favorable spirit within the team.  The article concludes with a restatement of the accomplishments of the team and a confidence in future success as encouraged by adhering to Fleming’s strategies.

Methodology

It seems obvious from the outset that Andy Fleming regarded the Xavier team as locked into self-defeating behaviors and attitudes, and the methods employed by him to reverse these were consistently of a psychological nature.  As extensive quotes from Fleming himself are used, it is clear that he both analyzed and confronted the “Old Xavier” from the start, essentially addressing certain issues as they first presented themselves to him.   More exactly, if there was a “blueprint” to come of this, it was one largely created as the new coach went along.   For example, it appears that Fleming discussed past issues with the team players, and early on; he reports that they uniformly expressed discontent with the boredom of riding to away games, bad food, and a general lack of preparedness.  In concert with this information, Fleming also noted that the team typically and carelessly relied on little more than bringing in players with acceptable reputations in the sport, irregardless of their grades or characters, and then left them to their own devices.   The proactive approach of Fleming as noted above, then, was evident in his candid soliciting of the players’ viewpoints.   From the start and without any strategy, he was already engaging the team in the process of its own recovery.

Fleming’s actual “blueprint” was then devised and applied, although the term is something of  an exaggeration of his strategy.   That is to say, having determined that the Xavier soccer team suffered from an absence of commitment generated by a complete absence of structure, he first informed the players, and in no uncertain terms, that the past was precisely that.  The “Old Xavier” was a model no one was going to be turning to any longer, and he applied a great deal of friendly, psychologically-based encouragement.   He asked for direct eye contact from the players when he spoke with them, as he asked them to complete questionnaires designed to solicit their own viewpoints about the team.   This latter exercise infused a sense of ownership within the players, which Fleming saw as vital to any success.   Then, although Fleming’s crew was undisciplined and lacking in commitment, he refused to “clean house”, and start over with new players.  Here, again, the coach benefits from expressing confidence in his players.

Fleming employed several other psychological ploys to reach his players.  Understanding that the seniors of the school would be less eager to more overtly invest themselves in a team they would soon be leaving, Fleming asked only that they assist him in providing themselves with an enjoyable experience.  He also used visual aids; a picture of a bus was hung in the locker room, and described as representing the Musketeers and their future.  Fleming asked his team to stare at the bus until it began moving, as he also expressed an acceptance of knowing that some players “get on the bus” more readily than others.   As the psychological maneuvers yielded results, Fleming’s strategy then went to direct supervision.  Players were no longer allowed to arrive late for practice, and uniformity in shoes and haircuts was established.  If there was a core to the “blueprint”, it seems to have been a scenario wherein each attainment fueled another, and an exponential process of growth was generated.

Lastly, Coach Fleming’s plan relied upon viewing his team, not merely as soccer players, but as individuals within a unit, and one vastly abetted by mutual respect and a natural, sportsmanlike affection.   It was ordered, for example, that any player called off the field for a substitution be embraced by the entire team.  Physical contact, be it hand slap or hug, was encouraged after each goal, and the team was instructed to enter and leave the field as a single squad.  In Fleming’s own words, “gimmicks” can be extremely effective in motivating a team and, despite a few losses and setbacks, it appears that his strategy was sound.

Discussion

Two elements are conspicuously absent in Austin’s article, in regard to Andy Fleming’s admittedly remarkable reversal of the Musketeers’ performance.   The first of these is a lack of any specific training changes or techniques introduced by Fleming.  There is no reference to actual practice routines, either as developed by Fleming or better coached by him.   The only practice concern mentioned is, again, that of the team’s required promptness.  Then, while it appears that a large part of Fleming’s accomplishment goes to the higher grade point averages of the players, there is no discussion of how this evolved.  The reader is left to assume that the greater levels of personal motivation instilled by Fleming had this effect, but that is all that can be done.   The implication is that the new coach, in building character and pride in the team, fostered an equally strong desire to excel in other arenas, but this may only be supposed.

Most obvious in the article as a whole is that there is, in fact, no real “blueprint”, or even strategy.  Clearly, as documented by Austin, the Xavier Musketeers did indeed perform a striking turn-around and completely reverse their standing as a losing team.   That of itself, however, does not translate to a strategy.  Instead, Fleming simply adopted a course based on fairly reliable psychological concepts.  He immediately asserted to the players a sense of caring by asking for their opinions, as he consistently exhorted them to view themselves in a new way.   He employed visual aids, from the image of the bus to that of a butterfly symbolizing the elusive, Atlantic Tournament ranking, and he insisted that the team perceive itself as what he foresaw it becoming: a championship team.   Consequently, the article does not so much convey the path and success of a strategy as it does the benefits from one man’s degree of commitment.  Interestingly, Austin concludes on the optimistic note that Fleming’s “blueprint”, if followed in the future, will undoubtedly bring continued success to the team.  Based on the article’s content, however, the greater likelihood is that such success will depend on Fleming alone, or on a coach with an identical commitment.