The dog days of August. The fun of Memorial Day and the Fourth of July are distant memories. The beach vacation is over, and the ocean breeze is long gone. It’s 95 degrees with a heat index of 103, the air isn’t moving, and cicadas chirp in the background in what becomes an almost eerie tone after a while.
For 17 straight years, the dog days of August and all that came with them meant one thing for me: training camp. 4 weeks that somehow seemed like 40 in anticipation of the upcoming football season.
At Maplewood, a storied youth football program dating back to the 1960s, that meant a dozen or so teams sharing one dusty, beat-up field in Bethesda, honing in on the fundamentals of the game.
Given that I didn’t exactly paint the most rosy picture of the dog days of August, you can imagine it’s hard to motivate kids to strap on 10 pounds of gear and go run full speed into each other for two hours in the summer heat. It takes a special type of leader to keep a team motivated through the dog days, and no one, I mean no one, did it better than legendary Maplewood coach Joseph “Rooster” Nalls.
I spent four seasons with Coach Nalls, three as a player and one as an assistant coach, and he started every single practice and every single game the exact same way:
“Welcome to Maplewood, It’s a Fine Day for Football!”
-Coach Joseph "Rooster" Nalls
Coach Nalls would continue with, “How y’all feel??” to which the team would reply, “Fired Up!” That was followed by clapping in unison until Coach Nalls was satisfied with the level of enthusiasm and we could begin practice or warm up for a game.
Looking back, Coach Nalls was giving us a daily lesson on consistent enthusiasm . Heat, cold, rain, or snow, it was always a fine day for football when Coach Nalls showed up, and he demanded that same type of consistency from his staff and players.
I’m positive there were days Coach Nalls had a bad day at work, a flat tire, or something to deal with at home. You’d never know. He always set the tone and made sure we knew it was a fine day for football and that his team was alert, engaged, and ready to roll.
There are undoubtedly dog days in our work lives. Times of the year or points in our careers when things are slow, deals aren’t going right, and it feels like training camp will last forever.
I wish more people had the chance to play for Coach Nalls, but if you didn’t, you can still take his lesson of consistent, unwavering, genuine enthusiasm into whatever you’re working on, no matter the environment around you.
You don’t need to have the corner office with the view, or a big title and salary, to take on this type of leadership, either. Coach Nalls wasn’t the head coach of the Washington Redskins, the Maryland Terrapins, or the Gonzaga Eagles. But he treated every second of every practice and game like it was just as important, if not more important, than those “bigger” coaching roles.
Opportunities to impact ourselves and others with consistent enthusiasm are all around us. Sometimes, leadership is as simple as showing up, setting the tone, and reminding everyone around you that there’s a reason to be excited about what you have the chance to do together.
“Welcome to Maplewood, it’s a Fine Day for Football!”
