A Servant Attitude

It is unfortunate that we confuse being a servant with being a slave. Often in our society the least respected and poorest payed people are in the so called "service industry." We started a program referred to as earning

"Service Credit." I believe we do a discredit to our players if we do not provide opportunities for them to give back to others. We tried to emphasis to our players the many acts of service others have done for them as

they progressed through their lives. We attempted to use players as role models for our younger players as often as we could. We were very blessed to have had an excellent group of people who gave a great deal of

their time, energy, and money to "boost" and support our program. We wanted our players not to feel entitled and allow others to give without them also giving.

You can set up any guidelines you want for your own program. The following are a few of the guidelines we administered in our situation:

1) We asked each of our players in grades 9-12 to contribute a certain

number of hours of service.

2) Service Opportunities included any or a combination of the following:

a. Helping coach at youth basketball camps.

b. Working at concession stands during youth tournaments.

c. Participating in fund raising events sponsored by the Booster Club.

d. Officiating elementary games.

e. Helping to sell advertising space on game programs

f. Coaching at our Saturday morning sessions.

g. Visit nursing homes to visit and distribute schedules.

h. Organize food shelf collection games

i. Volunteer at elementary school(s)

This kid must really be good if you have to triple team him!

A baseball coach in our area takes the service credit idea a step further and uses service credit opportunities as part of his point system for lettering. A player could earn points for being on the A or B Honor Roll. A player could also earn points for participating in other sports. These earned points were

part of a system used towards a player lettering.

I like the idea of the players investing some time and effort into the program

rather than fostering an entitlement attitude. Our booster club provided the

monetary means for a number of extras that made our program special. It's

kind of like watching young children at Christmas. You pile a number of presents in front of them and they rapidly tear open one present after another. They eventually reach the end of their pile and give you the, "Isn't

their any more?" I felt it was a valuable lesson for our players to have a little

of their own "skin in the game." If we have to invest some time and energy

into a project, we tend to appreciate the result more. Teaching young people to take responsibility is a good character building activity.