Get Dressed and Get Out Here... A Shift in Coaching Philosophy with Coach David Harbin

Today's Play: David Harbin shares his path from playing soccer at Winthrop University to coaching high school and middle school soccer and basketball. He emphasizes the importance of creating a positive team culture, highlighting practices like ending practices with a "joke of the day" and introducing the "warrior belt" to recognize players for their contributions beyond on-field performance. David also discusses the emotional challenges of the college recruitment process and the importance of finding joy in every aspect of being part of a team. 

Today's Coach: David Harbin is the Assistant Director of Activities and Athletics at Decatur High School in Decatur, GA.  He is a Certified Athletic Administrator, recognized by the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, and serves on the Board of the Georgia Athletic Directors Association (GADA).  He has taught various classes with the GADA on Middle School Athletics and has served as the Middle School Liaison, as well as the Chair of the Technology Committee.  Prior to becoming a full-time Athletic Director, David taught Middle School Social Studies and coached high school and middle school soccer and basketball, working primarily as the Boys' Varsity Soccer Coach for eight years.  His team competed in multiple Final Fours and won the 2016 state championship.  He was recognized by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America as the Small School State Coach of the Year, as well as the Small School Coach of the Year for the Southern Region of the US. In college, David played soccer for Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina.  

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Picking Teams: A Playbook for Parents is produced by: Amy Bryant and Sasha Melamud

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Transcript

Amy Bryant  00:00

Amy, welcome to picking teams a podcast that dives into the playbooks of seasoned coaches. I'm your host. Amy Bryant, a 23 year veteran college coach, and my guests hail from the professional, college and youth ranks. Together, we'll share real stories from our coaching experiences to empower you as parents to be positive forces in your child's sports journey. All right, our guest today is David Harbin. David is the Assistant Director of activities and athletics at Decatur High School in Decatur, Georgia. He's a certified athletic administrator and serves on the board of the Georgia athletic directors association prior to becoming a full time athletic director, David taught middle school social studies and coached high school and middle school soccer and basketball, working primarily as the boys varsity soccer coach for eight years, his team competed in multiple Final Fours and won the 2016 state championship. He was recognized by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America as a small school Coach of the Year for the southern region of the US in college, David played soccer for Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Welcome to the podcast, David, it's great to have you. 

David Harbin  01:26

Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here and to hopefully share some insights. I have been a avid listener, believe it or not, to the podcast since it started, and I've really used it as a professional development resource. Honestly, part of my job as an athletic director now is not only to support coaches, but also to support parents and help them to navigate this student athlete experience, and I think your podcast is doing a great job of pulling people from different elements of that industry and giving good advice. So hopefully I can add to that. But if not, I'm going to continue listening so I can learn.

Amy Bryant  02:18

Well, thanks, David. I appreciate that. I'm glad to hear that somebody is listening out there.

David Harbin  02:22

Listening out there, one one fan, at least,

Amy Bryant  02:25

great. So you started, I mean, you're obviously an avid soccer player growing up, and you played in college and then wound up coaching High School. Tell me about that journey.

David Harbin  02:41

Yeah, I was, was a kid that, you know, my parents say, was never interested in trucks or drawing or anything. It was just whatever. If they could put a ball in my hand, then I was all into it. And so it was always interested in playing different sports, and was given the opportunity to play soccer at Winthrop University, which was a great experience that I'm very grateful for. And while I was there, was trying to figure out what my next step is, and really had no idea, and dabbled in a couple different majors. Actually was a business major. Ironically, I was a sports management major, and dropped out of that and ended up being a psychology major, came back to Decatur high school and had a conversation with my basketball coach, who was also our athletic director at the time, Carter Wilson, and basically said, How do I do what you do? I love sports. I've always been around sports, and you get to be around sports as a job. What does that look like? And his advice was, if you want to coach and you want to be an athletic administration, you start off as a teacher. And I, at the time, didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I definitely knew I did not want to be a teacher. Through some convincing that wasn't hard, I did decide to follow that path, and at the time, Emory University had a Masters of Arts teaching that was an accelerated program, that was a one year certification program and Master's program that I graduated from, Winthrop immediately got into that program, was able to do some student teaching here at Decatur High School, and then was fortunate enough to be hired to teach social studies at the middle school, And I immediately was jumping in and started coaching basketball, actually, before transitioning over to become the head coach of the boys soccer program. 

Amy Bryant  04:49

Wow, and you had a lot of success as the head coach of the boys soccer program.

David Harbin  04:53

Yeah, we were really fortunate to be successful, and we'll hopefully get into what success means, but certainly we were able to, as you kind of mentioned, play in a few final fours and won a state championship in 2016 I was a coach for eight years and moved into this full Time athletic director, assistant athletic director role five years ago, and it just became too difficult to support all of the coaches that I was responsible for supporting and also coach a team and found an opportunity to transition. But I miss coaching a lot for various reasons.

Amy Bryant  05:40

Yeah, tell tell us about those reasons. I'm always curious. I mean, this is, this is me personally, because, you know, I left coaching a couple years ago. So what is it that you miss? Because I'm not missing it.

David Harbin  05:53

Well, I'm surprised to hear that honestly.

Amy Bryant  05:57

I mean, I love coaches, I love what I accomplish. I love the coaches that I communicate with, but, you know, I felt like my time was was done for sure. But I always love hearing, you know, from others. I think for me, I think for me, it's the relationships that I miss more than anything else. But I'm, you know, I'm always curious to hear what else is out there that's that's missed,

David Harbin  06:19

yeah, well, that that is my answer. I went from being a middle school social studies teacher for 12 years where I had a class, I had 100 to 125 middle schoolers that I saw every day I was I was never one of those teachers that got really excited about the content. I like teaching, but what I liked about teaching, and teaching social studies especially, is it allowed for conversations. You got to know the kids. But my favorite part of teaching was homeroom and walking to lunch, because I got to talk to the kids about what they did that weekend and what they're interested in, and their musical performances and their baseball games. And so I miss that about teaching. And I miss the same thing with with coaching soccer, I have a lot of, like, great memories. And you know, really, you know, a list of favorite moments, and so many of them are just about like being around the kids I do know, and I'd say all the time, like there are not many people who are more competitive than I am, and I do miss being on the sidelines and being able to, like, feel like I have an impact on a game. It's difficult for me to go to a soccer game now and just watch, because I want to be a step closer. You know, being on the sideline and being a step behind the bench are two very different positions, and I miss that competitiveness for sure. But more than anything, it's just spending time around kids and getting to know them as people.

Amy Bryant  07:54

Absolutely. Yeah, I totally get that. One thing I want to ask you about you, and I have talked about this in the past, your experience at Winthrop, because I know that you know you had a unique experience going there you were walk on which is not the most common way to get on a team these days. So can you tell us a little bit about that experience?

David Harbin  08:24

Yeah, my experience, I think, was very unique. I was interested in continuing to play soccer, but honestly wasn't sure if I was good enough, and really had no way of gaging. There were some people who told me that I definitely should be pursuing that option, and so I did, and back then, we were making highlight tapes on the VHS and sending that out to coaches and traveling around and visiting but just never really gained a whole lot of traction. There were some schools that did offer me opportunities to play, but they weren't schools that I necessarily saw myself at, and so I had narrowed my school choices down to either going to Winthrop as a student, I had some older friends who had gone, and they had enjoyed the school, and there was a lot about the school that I thought would be a good fit for me, and then I was going to go to University of Georgia, because that's just sort of was the default at the time. Would have been great. And actually, I went to, went to visit as a student, and we went to visit the coach rich past panko at the time. And just to ask, you know, about the program and what the opportunities were to walk on and we, you know, got the standard, we do offer walk on trials in the spring. If you come as a student, you know, we may or may not have opportunities, but you're welcome to try out. And it was a, you know, thank you for the conversation. And we left and got home and went to lunch at school the next day, my club coach's daughter was a classmate of mine, and she came and congratulated me because Winthrop wanted me to play soccer there. And I said, I'm pretty sure you're mistaken. I just left the coach two days ago and he didn't know who I was. And you know, kind of jumping ahead. He, at the time, didn't know who I was, but just fortuitously, the goalie coach walked in an hour later, asked you know who had been visiting. Mentioned my name. It rang a bell in his head. He had seen me play somewhere, I think, the same day they found out that a JUCO transfer had not made the grades, and sure enough, they called me that night and said, Hey, here's sort of what happened. And if you're interested, we'll give you a preferred walk on spot with no, you know, no scholarship, but if you want to play, you can play. And again, I was already thinking about going as a student, and it kind of fell into my lap, and it worked out really well. And I did have a great experience. I love being an athlete there, but kind of a unique story, and my takeaway for that, for student athletes now, is to just stay in the game if it's something that you want to do, continue to reach out to coaches, continue To find out if there's an opportunity, because you never know what's going to happen. And it could have been that, you know, we went on that visit and just didn't go visit the coach, because I'd send them a highlight tape. We had told them where we were playing, they had never responded. Why would we go visit? But we went to visit, and things fell in line. And I just know the recruitment process is really hard now. We do signing days with our kids, and one of the things that I mentioned at all of them is that everybody knows how hard it is to put yourself in a position to be recruited talent wise, right? We know how hard you have to work. We know you've got to sacrifice your social life. You got to wake up early and go to the weight room, you got to travel to club. You got to do all those things. But what is not discussed, and really isn't known unless you've been in the process, is how brutal the recruitment process can be emotionally. You know you have to continue to be vulnerable, you have to continue to put yourself out there and say, hey, I want this to very likely hear well, we're not interested in you over and over and over again, and we don't have an opportunity for you. And I think it's very easy to for kids to convince themselves, you know what? I don't want that, because I it's not that I don't want the opportunity, but I don't want the continued rejection, and so just pull back, and you never know. So stay in the game, continue to be communicative, continue to let people know and make good decisions. Don't put yourself in a school that you don't want to be at, but allow yourself to be uncomfortable, and hopefully it works out, but also know that maybe it won't, but you won't know if you don't stay in it. 

Amy Bryant  13:09

That's right, that's so true, and that's, you know, one of the major components to my coaching process with the student athletes that I work with now is coaching them on how to advocate for themselves and how to take those calculated risks by creating a target list of schools where they legitimately have a shot at playing and not going after so much, those reach schools where they don't have a shot, you know, the schools that everyone wants to Play at your percentage chance of going there and getting recruited is so small, just like your percentage chance of getting into the most selective academic institutions is so small, it's the same thing for recruiting and for looking at those really competitive programs. So having a targeted list is really important, and that helps kind of reduce some of that risk, but also being able to manage that fear of failure is one of those things that I really work with my student athletes on now. So thank you for mentioning that. I also love that your story has this element of luck to it, because truly in the recruiting process, there often is just that, you know, four late clover that kind of falls into your lap. Everything has to be aligned for that offer to come. And you know, whether it's a JUCO kid pulling out, or whether it's an injury that occurs, or whether it's a coaching change or something, you know, you never know the those you know occurrences are frequent, and like you said, staying in the game and putting yourself out there is the only way to know if, if something is going to fall in your lap. So thank you for sharing that you mentioned in your introduction what success looks like. Let's get into that in coaching basketball, in coaching soccer, and now as an athletic director, where you oversee multiple sports, what characteristics do you see in the most successful athletes?

David Harbin  15:15

That's a great question, and I'm gonna try to answer it without rambling. So me back in, but that's something that I think about a lot. And you asked, you know, what is a successful athlete, which is reframing it a little bit from how I think about it. I think about more of, you know, what is a successful program? And I think both, you know, I'll try to answer both. I think they are wanting the same, but success can be measured by the scoreboard, and it is. Sports are competitive, and they're competitive for a reason, and because you are competing, there are a lot of lessons to learn through that competition. And so I think it is inevitable that coaches and students and parents pay attention to your time on the clock, what the scoreboard says, what your record is. Did you make it to the championship? Did you win? And those things are important, and they are good measures of success. But winning is not the only thing, and I would argue it's not the most important thing of a story I tell. My first year as a soccer coach, I took over the program and we struggled. Actually ran into one of the seniors from that team, and he laughed about the challenges we had that season. We were three and 13, we could not win a game outside of teams that had players that just didn't play soccer. And as a new coach, I was really struggling with not being successful and not winning, and trying to find ways to push kids and raise their expectations. And the next year, we did that. We pushed them hard, and we believed that they were good, and we ended up actually making it to the Final Four, and we lost in penalty kicks, and it was just a brutal way to end. But as a coach, I thought we've arrived like we are successful. And I did a postseason evaluation with the players, and one player wrote back, and one of the questions was, you know, did you think we had a successful season? And his answer was, you know, on paper, yeah, I think we had a successful season. We went to the Final Four, of course. However, I was miserable the entire time and did not enjoy being a part of the team and as a coach and as a teacher and as a person, that just completely transformed how I viewed what we were doing. And I knew at that point it's like we're going to try to continue to be successful, but we have to make this enjoyable, because if the kids are not having a good time, why are what are we doing? We're missing the mark on so many other different opportunities, and so we made some changes, made sure that practices were fun, made sure we were connecting with kids. We're just more thoughtful about our decisions and not only how it impacted the team in the program, but also how it's going to impact every kid in the program. And I don't know if this is why. You know, there's a lot of other reasons. But the next year we we made it to the state championship and won in the finals. And so it's a good way to finish that story, but success, I guess, to come back to your question, it was not about winning the championship. It was about knowing that those kids were having a good experience. And really, the year before, we went to the Final Four, and I walked away feeling like a failure, because if the kids were not enjoying being a part of what we were building, we that was not a win. So it reframed how I approach coaching and how I measure the success of a program.

Amy Bryant  19:16

So what did you do? What were the changes that you implemented from that first year when you got the bad review, to the second year when when everyone was engaged in loving the program. What were the major changes? And I asked this because I think this is an important thing for parents to keep an eye on with their children at any level, any age, to make sure that they're enjoying their experience, because that's what this is about. It's not about the end result and where your child ends up in college, whether your child plays Pro or whatever. It's really about right now, and whether or not they're having a good experience. 

David Harbin  19:49

Yeah, two things stand out. One, and this is small, but I do think it had a major impact, is we finished every practice with a joke of the day. So it didn't matter if we had a good practice or a bad practice, we had a joke. The rule for the joke of the day was this has to be a joke that you can tell, you know, your four year old sister, and you can tell your you know, 80 year old grandmother, and they'll end up funny, very much like laughy Taffy style silly that were funny, but you know, the funnier ones were probably not actually funny. And the way we did it was we two coaches did the joke on the first day after we told those jokes, we picked one player each, and their job was to go find a joke and bring it back to the next practice, and then they picked two more players, and it just really again. Left every day, I'm like, Okay, I had a good price. I had bad practice, but everybody was hopefully smiling right and made sure that, like, that was how we walked away. Another thing that we did was we were very punitive in my first couple years, if you were late, then you were running. And if you were late, we all were running, because if you weren't here, that shows that you're not committed to the team. And you know what? We're gonna there's gonna be a consequence for that. And while I think that's important to an important value to emphasize, we did a lot of running in my first year, and what I realized is like the running wasn't solving the problem, if anything else, it was creating resentment amongst the players because their teammate was late. It was creating resentment with me because I was running them, and we took a different approach. If you were late, get dressed and get out here for practice, because you're an important part of this team, and we can't be as good as we need to be if you're not out here pushing your teammates. Now, there's a consequence. You're going to do something after practice, or you're going to do something before the next practice, because it is important that you're on time, but you are valuable to this team. We need you here, and I think that mindset, mindset shift changed their behavior. We went from running literally almost every practice my first two years because somebody was late to maybe running tour. You know, we had two or three kids that would show up late because they knew it was important that they were going to be there. And then I think, also creating a culture in the locker room where kids want to be there. They come into practice. Practice starts at 615 they're there at 545 just because they want to be in the locker room with their teammates, not because they're scared of the punishment from the coach, but I want to be a part of what's happening in here. I want to spend time. Want to catch up my teammates. So just taking the emphasis away from consequences and punishment and putting it on how valuable you are to our team, whether you're the best player or you're one of our role players. We need you here to get better, so get dressed and get out here, and we'll handle that individually, separately.

Amy Bryant  23:07

Wow, that's really interesting and a great approach, and I'm really glad that the guys latched on to that new philosophy. When I was coaching, I definitely made them run for being late. But honestly, we didn't, we didn't have quite, you know, first of all, we have smaller we had a smaller team. I coached tennis in college, right? So we had, you know, maybe 12 kids on the team, and maybe one of them was late every two months, so it was hardly an issue. But also, I think they didn't like running, because I was pretty consistent with that as well. So that's interesting to hear that you kind of shifted that mindset with the value piece. I hope that my players felt valued even though they even though I run, ran them. I'm definitely going to have a think on this later. But the joke of the day, I love that. I loved all the goofy stuff coaching, I think, you know, making them realize that it's not all about performance, it's also about experience. That's huge. Do you remember any particular jokes of the day that you could share? Were there any good ones?

David Harbin  24:15

I'm so bad at this. I The number of jokes that I had to tell and like had written on a practice plan, and that I heard you would think I could pull one joke. I think I fold under pressure.

Amy Bryant  24:30

No worries. No worries at all.

David Harbin  24:32

I will say another. Another thing that we did do, that we encourage our coaches to do now, is we started what was called the warrior belt. And I will, I will claim that this was before all of the, you know, division one football programs were handing out, you know, the wrestling belts. We had a wrestling belt that was 999, from Amazon. It was a plastic, shiny little belt. But the warrior belt went to the player who was helping us to create a successful culture in our team. And it the reason we did that is we knew again that our best players were always going to get recognition the kids who scored the goal, the kids who started people knew who they were, and we wanted to be intentional about making giving credit to and recognizing those players who were doing all the other things that the scoreboard is never going to reflect. And so at the end of some practices, we would do a warrior bell at the end of every game, whether we won or lost, who was a player who was impactful, and it could be a player who scored three goals, and sometimes that is important to to our success on the field, but other times, we would have players recognize because they were on the sideline and didn't play one minute, but at halftime, they were vocal with their teammates about what we needed to do. They were cheering on the sideline before the game. They were positive in the in the locker room. And it was things that we as coaches made sure we highlighted how important that stuff was, but the way that the worry about was given, sort of like the joke we gave it out the first time, but if you were the recipient of the warrior belt, then your job the next time was you to give it out. Yeah, now it wasn't just us looking for those positive characteristics, but you have to be paying attention to your teammates. Which of your teammates are doing the things that represent the culture of the team that we've talked about, and you give it to them, and I think that changed their their perspective as well. Like, oh, coach, just gives this award out. No, no, you're going to give the award out, and you have to think about who's doing the things that you appreciate. So we push that again, because it you're always going to have the kids who are recognized for their talent and their skill, but be thoughtful about giving value to all the things that we know as coaches are intangible that aren't going to necessarily be recognized, and kids don't know how important they are, unless you put a high a spotlight on them and tell them,

Amy Bryant  27:14

I love that. I feel like you're giving a coaching master class on team culture right now. It's really good stuff, so we'll have to have you back on the show again to share some more insights with our parents, because, because truly You are a great source of information and support.