Success Part 3 - the team goal

In the first two episodes of this series we talked about why I think it’s important to define success for your teams, as well as the first of our three metrics, the personal goal. Today we’re going to be discussing our second benchmark, the team goal.

The team goal for me serves a dual purpose. It lets me set what our priority will be for that game, and it also gives me an easy reference point, something I can bring the kids back to.

Here is an example.

With my basketball teams, regardless of the age group, U12 all the way to U18, I will usually set our team goal as “play good team defense.” 

This may seem a little nebulous or generic, but I’m looking for something that is short, to the point, and easy to remember for an athlete in the middle of a game. For us, it really acts as a cue, a reminder of all the things we’ve talked about and worked on in practice. 

So for my youngest kids, it may stay really basic— good team defense means that everyone needs to concentrate on their defensive assignment all the time. Every team member is going to focus on defense. As they advance, it means that we’re going to not only play individual defense, but also begin working together within our system. They will focus on their individual task as well as making sure they are in a position to support their teammates. If we’re lucky, and our basketball IQ has matured, we will go deeper: defensive rotations, hedges, double teams, full and half fronts. It can get pretty complex, but it will always be summed up by “play good team defense.”

As I mentioned earlier, this team goal acts as a reference point as well. The system I currently like my teams to play is, up-tempo and defense first. Many of our scoring opportunities and our game control are created from our defense. 

So those games when we’re getting opportunities, but the shots just aren’t going in— team defense, the shots will eventually start to fall.

When things are getting chaotic and the kids are starting to get flustered— focusing on team defense can bring us back under control.

It doesn’t take a big lecture, often just a question— Are we hitting our team goal right now? While I'll usually remind our younger teams what this means, with a more advanced group, the kids may answer, often coaching each other about adjustments, or things they see. 

Like the personal goal, the idea of setting a team goal as a measure of success isn’t just a tool for youth sports, it extends to elite teams as well. We can find a great example in the NBA, the world’s highest level of professional basketball. You may assume at that level a team goal would be complex, but like so many things, the beauty is in the simplicity. 

When Steve Kerr took over as head coach of the Golden State Warriors he inherited a team full of players that were good passers, but, as a team they ranked near the bottom of the league in total passes per game. One of the goals he set was to raise that stat, aiming for three hundred or more passes per game. That simple. The goal was basic, but not magic. The total number of passes was just a good measurement of how effectively they were executing their offensive plan each game: good off-ball movement, good shot selection, and team oriented play. They went on to finish that season with one of the best records in NBA history and winning the championship.

Now, I’ve gone pretty deep with the basketball talk today, but this idea of a team goal is applicable across many sports. Just pick an area you want to target for growth. Maybe it’s an aspect of culture, or a reminder cue for an area of emphasis—something that is important for your style of play.

There is obviously defense, but you can also focus on things like ball movement with the number or quality of passes, or good player spacing. Perhaps even the time of possession or number of possessions.

Because it’s a team goal, I recommend choosing something that everyone is able to make a contribution to. I believe it can help emphasize the importance of working together.

While in many sports that element of teamwork is easier to see, there are outliers. Softball and baseball are interesting cases, they are both team sports but comparatively have a low degree of on-field interaction with teammates. When coaching softball I’ve usually had two team goals. Goals that make us accountable to each other and keep minds focused. "Aggressive, heads up baserunning” or when on defense "everybody moves on contact.”

For highly individualistic sports like swimming, track and field, tennis, badminton or gymnastics, you may need to get a little more creative. Maybe it’s about supporting and cheering on your teammates as much and as loud as possible. Or maybe, just supporting the team in whatever way you can.

At the European Athletics Team Championship in 2023, the Belgian national team was trying to avoid relegation, but was in a bind with injuries to several key athletes. They were about to miss an event and lose valuable points. Until shot putter  Jolien Boumkwo, knowing that she would finish far behind the other competitors, stepped up and ran the 100 meter hurdles, just so that her team would score points by her finishing. 

She  explained in a post race interview*, "My team is the most important thing for me," 

"I couldn't let it happen to lose by one point."

    An amazing example of a team mentality in an individual sport.

Join us on the next episode, where we’ll wrap up our series on success and talk about the third metric I use with my teams— being in a position to win at the end of the game.

*quote given to Agence France-Presse

All links accessed February 2026