HARTFORD, CT, January 13, 2012 – Trinity’s men’s squash coach Paul Assaiante was “on his game” Thursday evening in describing, with humor and aplomb, the challenges that a college coach faces in recruiting and motivating athletes as well as the attributes and attitudes that contribute to winning programs.
Assaiante, whose teams have won 251 consecutive matches and 13 consecutive national championships, was joined at the Key Issues Forum by Geno Auriemma, coach of the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team, and Jennifer Rizzotti, coach of the University of Hartford’s women’s basketball team and the starting point guard on the UConn women’s team that was undefeated in 1995 and won the first of seven national titles. Oz Griebel, president and CEO of the MetroHartford Alliance, moderated the standing-room-only event at the University of Hartford’s Lincoln Theater. The event was co-sponsored by The Hartford Courant.
The three coaches were chosen because of their outstanding careers. Assaiante opened his remarks with a figurative tip of his cap to Auriemma for opening the doors of opportunity for girls all over the world and demonstrating that they can achieve the same level of success that boys have long enjoyed. “What Geno has done,” said Assaiante, “really transcends sports.”
Given that the three are among “the winningest coaches” not just in their respective sports but at their schools, Griebel kicked off the hour-long program with a question about winning streaks, past and present. The panelists’ answers were similar in that they all agreed that the focus should be on the game at hand and not on what Rizzotti called “the pursuit of perfection.”
Assaiante, who readily acknowledges that his unparalleled streak could end at virtually any time, sought to downplay its significance, noting that while he may view the streak as “irrelevant,” the pressure of maintaining it is something the squash players feel. Nonetheless, Assaiante asserted, “Nothing will happen when the streak ends. We’ll just start over.”
Auriemma agreed that winning streaks contribute to the pressure that players heap on themselves but that he tries not to make the focus on winning the be-all and end-all of his notoriously arduous practices “If we perform in a certain way, everything else will take care of itself,” Auriemma said. “The only time [a streak] is an issue is when everyone around you starts asking about it.”
Motivation was another subject that the coaches delved into, with Rizzotti saying that she finds motivating players to be “the most challenging” aspect of being a coach. “Every kid…needs to be motivated differently,” she added. “There are different buttons that you need to push.”
Assaiante, who was a coach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point before arriving at Trinity, credits his former neighbor, Mike Krzyzewski, for giving him this sage advice: “You cry in practice and laugh in competition.” Krzyzewski is now the men’s basketball coach at Duke and has won more games than anyone in the history of men’s Division I basketball. In terms of motivating his team, Assaiante said he expects his players to “give 100 percent every day” and “to want to play as if their hair was on fire.”
Taking his cue from Assaiante, Auriemma sarcastically joked that “playing like your hair is on fire doesn’t work with girls.” Obviously, Auriemma has found alternative ways to motivate his players, given his four undefeated seasons, 36 Big East titles and a 90-game winning streak that ran from 2008-2010.
The three coaches also spoke about dealing with adversity. Auriemma said he tries to instill in his players the mindset that when things don’t go their way they have to acknowledge it and not repeat their mistakes. He said there are two ways to look at a defeat: Did you lose or did you get beaten? It’s not the end of the world to get beaten by a better, more talented team. But, he said, “our goal at Connecticut is never to lose a game.”
Assaiante described adversity as “a measure of character.” His objective is to create a system in which kids become “character large,” so that they can deal with adversity whenever it strikes. “There’s no room for character-small people in my program.”
Griebel asked the panelists about the challenges of recruiting. The three coaches all have very different perspectives because Auriemma has the luxury of choosing from the best of the best while Assaiante’s teams have a decidedly international look and Rizzotti must attract students to a university that is not among the country’s elite academic institutions.
Assaiante was blunt about his techniques. Among them are talking about the team as if it’s a family, searching for players who “buy into [his] program and think Trinity is an awesome place,” and who “aren’t knuckleheads.” The latter was a reference to Trinity’s high academic standards.
Rizzotti, who has won more games than any basketball coach in the University of Hartford’s history, said that one of the principal things that she learned from playing under Auriemma at UConn was that it’s important to surround yourself with the right people, and also to recruit players who display the character traits that will make them winners. Once you do that, said Rizzotti, “you set a standard that’s as high as you want it to be.”
Auriemma, who attracts the crème de la crème to his program, called recruiting the most important part of his job, as well as the most frustrating and inexact. “That’s why recruiting is so competitive,” he said.
Toward the end of the program, the coaches tackled one of the more intriguing questions that Griebel lobbed their way: how is this generation of student-athletes different than previous generations?
All three agreed that students today are generally more coddled by over-protective parents, and are forced into grappling with the concept of being held accountable for their actions. Said Rizzotti: “Kids nowadays have an inability to pick up the phone and have a conversation with an adult. They need to understand that we want them to be adults and that our challenge is to help them grow.”
Society has made it a tough time to be a coach, said Assaiante, adding that doting parents have “crippled” their children out of love and compassion. “We’re seeing more and more parental involvement,” he said. “When something goes wrong, an email goes to the president.”
Auriemma agreed with his coaching colleagues about protective parents who won’t allow their kids to fail. What parents don’t realize, he said, is that “in an effort to help their kids, they’re setting back their development.”