Carrie Graf: Coaching a two-way street
Issue: Volume 29 Number 2
Carrie Graf still considers her development as a coach is a work in progress.
Despite having a spectacular record in the Women’s National Basketball League (four championships (one with the Sydney Flames and three in charge of the Canberra Capitals), spending six years and two medal-winning Olympic Games as assistant coach to the Australian Opals and becoming the first Australian to be an assistant and then head coach in the United States Women’s National Basketball Association, Graf remains unconvinced that she has reached the peak of her potential.
‘You have to keep looking for ways to change and grow – it’s critical in high performance coaching because the game evolves and you have to evolve with it,’ she says.
‘The current generation of athletes is different from those of 20 or even 10 years ago. Society is changing and it is important always to have your finger on the pulse of your team. You need to know how the players operate and the best way to communicate with them.’
Graf believes her decision to switch from playing to coaching at an early age has helped her keep abreast of these important changes. ‘I was 25 when I had my first head coaching job and there were three players in the team who were 35,’ she says.
‘As a result for most of my career up until almost now I have been younger or the same age as many of the athletes I coach. That has probably helped because I was one of them, both in age and social influence. There was no generation gap.’
Her current contract with the Capitals, where she will coach full time for the next three years, will give her the opportunity for some introspection about her philosophy that has been denied her until now. ‘As a young coach there is not a lot of science about what you do, you just do it,’ she says.
‘For most of my career I have not had an off-season. We would have a grand final in Australia and within a week I would be off to the US for the pre-season training camp of my team there. Then I would be back here 10 days before the season started again, so about the only time I had for evaluation was on the plane between countries.’
That evaluation has been left to others, and she is intrigued that on both sides of the Pacific she has acquired the reputation as someone who communicates well with her players.
‘All I can say is that I try to communicate in a way that I would want to be communicated to,” she says. ‘I have worked with a lot of different coaches, both here and in the US and have been exposed to many different styles in the elite environment. My aim has been to borrow from the best of all of them, but above all to create a positive environment.
‘That does not mean I am going to sugar-coat every comment or soften every blow – you can still be assertive without having to abuse people.’
For Graf, the relationship between a coach and athletes should take the form of a dialogue. ‘Share thoughts and ask questions,’ she says. ‘After all, it is the players who are performing the tasks during the game, and it is the players who have to make the crucial split-second decisions on court.
‘Sometimes, when I ask those questions, I get an answer I don’t expect, but then I understand it is a great answer and reveals something I did not see. Players challenge you as a coach and if you are prepared to ask them honestly what they think and create an environment where they can have trust that what they say will be taken for what it is, then I think they can walk away from games feeling positive about their performance.’
Even games which they have lost? ‘Yes, in the sense they can feel “I worked hard on that” or “I clearly understand what I must do in future which didn’t get done today”,’ Graf says.
‘Players do not try to make mistakes, and nor do coaches, but nevertheless mistakes are made, and it is how we respond to them that separates the good players or teams from the great.’
She believes a coach should not attempt to always carry the burden for the team throughout the season. ‘It’s like a long car journey,’ she says. ‘I may like to drive, and feel I should be doing most of the driving but being able to say to someone “you take the wheel for a time”, is less stressful for everyone.
‘There are times when the leader has to make a decision, but there are also times when you can share the load around – get an experienced player to make a decision about a particular play or coach a younger player on the team.’
She agrees she is enthusiastic and passionate in her pre-game talks ‘but I don’t stand up and give a speech about taking on the world’.
However, players like motivation. ‘I try to get people to be better and part of something that is successful; I want to coach winning teams and to see players develop in our program,” she says.
‘I really feel I have done my job if an athlete becomes a better person as well as a better player and leaves our program with more life skills than she entered.
‘If I see a player 10 years down the track and they say “you made a difference to my life”, that is a big win for me. It is as important as winning a championship because the time when they were a Canberra Capital has actually given them a better sense of what they are and what they will be.’
| The Carrie Graf File |
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| Fact File |
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