Be Ready. What's Next?
March is here, and so is the madness! The NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments are nearly underway with 68 teams from all across the country in each tournament battling through seven intense rounds to claim the championship. In these single-elimination competitions, every game is a rollercoaster. There could be a final-second shot to win it all or a heartbreaking miss that costs the team the game and sends them home after any given round. When these players aren’t giving it their all just to stay in the tournament, they’re preparing for the next game, which is just days away. What does preparing involve? Recovering, analyzing, strategizing, and making adjustments for the upcoming opposing team.
Years ago, when I coached youth basketball, I made the players practice the fundamentals—shooting, passing, dribbling. They ran plays and scrimmaged. Sometimes they just ran. But beyond the drills, the skills, and the teamwork, we were building endurance. Why? Because often overcoming fatigue is the biggest challenge—bigger than overcoming the competition. I didn’t let on to the players that I was preparing them for more than the next game or even the next season. I was helping prepare them for an element of life and the ever-changing challenges it would deliver. Fatigue is inevitable, endurance is not.
Once you overcome the fatigue, it’s essential that you keep your head in the game and look ahead for the next step. You made a basket? Now what? Get back on defense! You stole the ball? Get your eyes up. Where are your teammates? Stay one step ahead of the other team. I’m still applying this principle in our business. We prepare for the upcoming busy season by expanding and training our workforce and upgrading our equipment. And we prepare for the offseason by reviewing and tightening the budget where possible or searching for new markets.
Am I still coaching? You could say so. The “players” are a little older and wear Camelot uniforms, but I’m still doing my best to help them defeat some of life's inevitable challenges by building endurance and thinking one step ahead. If today they’re learning to drive a city truck, maybe tomorrow it could be a big rig. Our team leaders could grow into dispatchers. Or perhaps Camelot is their steppingstone to something entirely different.
We never truly know what’s around the corner, the height of the hill we’ll have to climb or the severity of the pivot we’ll have to make. But maybe we can learn how to rise to the challenge from watching the determined athletes fighting for their competitive lives this March Madness. At the very least, we’ll get to see some amazing games.