Charlie McFall: "It's All About the Experience"

12/11/2009

    Nothing (except hunting and football, maybe) gets Charlie McFall more fired up than extolling the virtues of Collegiate School sports, past, present, and future.
   In fact, this past August at the annual coaches’ luncheon, our normally laid-back co-athletic director spoke passionately about the philosophical underpinnings of the program.
   Even as one who has heard variations of his presentation many times over the years, I was moved by his words, which resonated with the veterans on the staff as well as the newcomers.
    McFall and I, friends and colleagues for nearly four decades, sat down on the porch of the Jacobs Gym recently and reflected, as we do from time to time, on the joy of being part of the Collegiate family.
   We began with his message that late summer day.

    You struck a chord with a lot of people, I began.

    The theme was how we define success for our athletic program. People might define it just as wins and losses, but at Collegiate, the most important thing is that we expect our coaches to give kids a good experience. We all like to win and hate to lose, but it’s not about wins and losses. It’s all about the experience.

   How do you define a good experience?

     It’s the lessons you learn from winning and losing. It’s sportsmanship. You win with humility. You lose graciously. They’re life skills. I talked to guys over the years in football. I told them it’s how you respond in the end that counts. I told them I don’t ever expect to see anyone crying after a game or throwing anything. Keep your head up. Congratulate your opponent. Then get determined as a team to improve.

      Collegiate’s Upper School enrollment makes us the size of a Group A school in the Virginia High School league, yet we fare well against Group AAA teams and a lot of independent schools with larger student bodies. We regularly have teams ranked in the Top 10 in the area and are always competitive in the Prep League and the LIS.

      We’re really fortunate. We have two full-time strength coaches and two 4,000-square-foot weight rooms. We have great facilities and the budget to take care of what we have to do to have a top-notch program in all areas: academics, arts, and athletics.
      We have great participation from our student body, our kids are very coachable, and our coaches are all on the same page. They support each other. We don’t have coaches telling kids not to play other sports. Because of our numbers, it’s critical to the success of our program that coaches buy into that idea. If we didn’t have kids playing 2 and sometimes 3 sports rather than specializing, we’d have a hard time being as good as we are.
      And we’ve got kids involved with good youth programs like Geronimo lacrosse, Tallyho field hockey, Cougar Paws basketball, and club wrestling. That gives them an opportunity to find out what they’re excited about.

      We have an occasional superstar, but more often than not we’re competing with students who simply work hard to maximize their talent.

      Those kids, the role players, are an integral part of each team. They’re critical to our success. I remember kids over the years who wouldn’t have made the football team somewhere else, but they were playing offensive line for Collegiate, and we were successful. Every sport has kids like that. We take the kids we have and do the best job we can to develop them. You win…you win. You lose…you lose. Again, it’s all about the experience.

       We have a lot of our graduates teaching and coaching either full-time or part-time.

        That shows that they appreciated their experience here. They want to give back and share with another generation what they got from the coaches who had an impact on their lives.

        Petey Jacobs and Mac Pitt, the gentlemen who laid the foundation for the boys’ athletic program, are gone now but still very much a presence. Although we’re far from perfect and always working to improve in all areas, my guess is that they would be very proud of the way everything is going these days.

        Yes. From the success of the program to the number of kids on the teams to the way they conduct themselves.   On all of our teams, we have expectations about sportsmanship. Our kids and coaches definitely get it. As the old saying goes, when you talk the talk, you better walk the walk. We expect our coaches, athletes, and parents to act appropriately whatever the situation. While we might not win every game, sportsmanship is an area where we can always strive to be perfect.
                              -- Weldon Bradshaw

        (McFall, who came to Collegiate in 1970, has been athletic director since 1987. He was the head varsity football coach from 1986 -2006 and head varsity baseball coach from 1982-2001.)

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