Abstract For this self-design honors experience, I plan to help coach and manage Team USA in the Junior Worlds Underwater Hockey Tournament this coming August. The tournament will take place August 20 th to August 23 rd at the Newport International Sports Village in Wales. My responsibilities will include assisting with tryouts, playing with the team to offer a challenge, organizing equipment, helping to schedule extra practices, and assisting with travel and making sure the team gets where they need to be in a timely fashion. My original intention with this tournament was to try out and become a participant myself, but I am unfortunately a few months over the age limit. I decided to do my part with the tournament by volunteering to coach and manage Team USA. I am actually grateful that I am too old for the tournament because it provides an opportunity for me to enhance my leadership skills and to bridge the gap from being an underwater hockey student to being in a leadership role. My primary goal for this tournament is to become a better leader and to take the skills that I learn in Wales back to my classes in Cincinnati and to wherever I find my first professional job after graduation. Another of my goals is to improve my communication because I will be communicating in several different ways on this tournament. I will be a colleague of my fellow coaches and managers and will have to communicate with them in that manner. I will be an older sister figure to the few girls who will be on the team, and I will have to learn how to communicate with them to keep them feeling positive about their particular role on the team. I will have played on past teams with several of the members of Team USA, so to them I will be a fellow teammate, just not participating. I will be more of a mentor. I hope this experience will broaden my communication skills so I can speak with many different groups of people effectively. My final goal for this experience is to learn more organizational skills. I have learned that the best way to go about work is in an organized manner, so I hope that in such a high-pressure setting such as Junior Worlds I can learn how to be efficient with our time and to perform tasks that need to be performed beyond the standard that is expected of me. With these three goals accomplished, I hope to come out of this experience a more enlightened person who is better with handling the struggles of everyday life. Due to the tournament being in August, I have a very rough estimate of how much time this tournament will take. Assuming tryouts will be the beginning of May, the total amount of time I will take on this experience will be about 174 hours. This includes fourteen hours for tryouts, 75 hours of practice, 30 hours for the tournament, and 55 hours outside of the tournament during waking hours in Wales. Connection to Learning Outcomes within an Honors Thematic Area This experience will fulfill the Leadership thematic area. I plan to meet three specific learning outcomes in this area: 1. Possesses knowledge of various leadership theories and identifies with the characteristics of leadership
For this learning outcome, I will focus on what it truly means to be a leader and what characteristics a leader requires. I will be fulfilling this by maintaining my composure during hectic events that are sure to come about while travelling abroad; these can include anything from trying to keep people calm while trying to claim luggage, establishing communication methods since many people will not want to use overseas data while in Wales, and making sure everyone stays as a group and no one wanders off alone.
2. Identifies the various characteristics of a leader in a given situation/role For this learning outcome, I will focus on maintaining a mature demeanor throughout the process of preparing for and participating in this tournament. I will keep jokes to myself when I need to be a supportive colleague for my fellow coaches and managers, be constantly willing to help when help is needed, and relate to any of the teammates and talk them through whatever is troubling them during this high-pressure time. Many of the players will probably feel that their skills are inferior to those required for the task, so to help them overcome this obstacle I will work with each of them on whatever they are struggling with the most to help them overcome this mental obstacle. If I find that some players are skimping on their training because they feel they are already satisfactorily prepared for this tournament, I will remind them that underwater hockey is much more popular in Europe and therefore the competitors overseas will be much more difficult to face. I will make sure each player is keeping up with his or her training regimen. 3. Has the ability to relate, communicate and work effectively with peers
I will be focusing on my communication goal for this learning outcome. Although I am closer in age to the players than to the other coaches and managers, they will be my peers as opposed to the players. I will need to make my voice heard in situations such as discussing strategy with the team. If I feel that my opinion is valuable, I will speak up during coach and manager meetings. I will also need to learn when to not speak and simply take orders, such as when spontaneous events like a player being injured to the point of needing to go to the hospital take place.
Connection to Goals and Academic Theories
This project is not very academic, but I will be able to use the communication skills I learned and apply them to my classroom discussions. I hope to become more assertive in the classroom and learn how to pick out details that may be more important than others. For my professional life, I hope I can gain valuable leadership skills that can allow me to advance quickly to higher positions in the workforce. I hope to become more assertive in my personal life as well and be more willing and capable of taking on leadership roles. I also hope this project will help me to realize that failing does not end my success; all I need to do is learn from it and move on to continue becoming successful. In the Intro to Psychology course I took last fall semester, we focused on studying leadership and what makes good leaders. In Professor Charles Ginns adaptation of Introduction to Psychology, he explains that there are multiple theories on leadership and a few different types of leaders. One theory is the trait theory of leadership, which states that great leaders tend to possess similar traits. Successful leaders tend to be intelligent, possess excellent social skills, and, above all, are charismatic. According to Professor Ginn, Charismatic leaders are leaders who are enthusiastic, committed, and self-confident; who tend to talk about the importance of group goals at a broad level; and who make personal sacrifices for the group. (Ginn, 338). I am going to take all three of these aspects of a charismatic leader to heart as I coach and manage the team. I am very enthusiastic about this team; not only because we are representing this country, but because this group of students is one of the best I have ever had the privilege of working with, so I am very excited about being able to help them grow both as individual players and as a team. During this experience I also hope to grow closer to each of the players. I am very committed to this team; underwater hockey has changed me into a more competitive, outgoing person, so I am determined to keep my dedication to it by helping this team as much as possible. Whenever the head coach needs me to help out with an extra project such as organizing equipment, I will be more than happy to do so. If a player wants me to work with them on technique more closely, I will do it without a problem. The one trait mentioned in Professor Ginns definition of a charismatic leader which I will need to improve is self-confidence. I have never been the most self-confident person, and being in charge of ten teens, working with people much older than me, and doing all of this in an unfamiliar country will definitely test the limits of my self-confidence. I am looking forward to this challenge and hoping that I will succeed. The group goals for this trip are simple: stay safe, play well, and above all, have fun! This is the trip and opportunity of a lifetime that many of these players will never experience again, so I hope that they can live it up as much as they can. One goal I do not personally have for the team is to win as many games as possible; in underwater hockey, the main goal is improving your self- performance in tournaments. Therefore, I will constantly be reminding the players to focus on teamwork and self-performance instead of scoring goals. Finally, I plan to make many personal sacrifices for this group. I will be sacrificing my time, energy, and finances to this group. I will sacrifice even more if I have to in order to ensure the success of this trip. Ultimately, my goal is to be an extremely charismatic leader that the players can turn to on this trip. Stangor, Charles, and Charles Ginn. Introduction to Psychology. 2013. Irvington, NY: Flat World Knowledge, Inc., 2013. N. pag. Print.
Initiative:
An important part of underwater hockey is puck handling; how skilled can one be with their hockey stick? To increase mobility in the stick-holding wrist, we usually practice dry-land puck work for several minutes a day so that we can take these skills to water and outwit our opponents. For this tournament, I will create a list of puck-handling skills that can be practiced anywhere for several minutes a day. They will range from very simple, such as pushing the puck back and forth, to very complicated, such as practicing on-land barrel rolls. Having these skills should give the team members significant advantage in the water. This will be a very simple PDF file that will have various levels of difficulty for each technique. For example, easy skills will be ping pong, tick tack, triangle, moderately easy skills will be figure eight, V, figure six and very difficult will be Ethiopian, Joe Gering move, barrel roll. (If you are very confused by now about what all of these words mean, dont worry; the players know what they are). The players can practice one or multiple skills from each difficulty level for ten minutes a day, which will greatly improve their puck handling skills.
Reflection:
For my reflection, I will keep a journal asking myself about my leadership skills after every time I work with the team members or the other managers and coaches. I will ask myself a series of questions based on the theories of learning on which I will be focusing: What traits did I express the most today? Were they constructive or destructive to improving my leadership? How were they constructive/destructive? Was I a charismatic leader today? How was I not a charismatic leader? How can I improve my charisma? How did I communicate with people today? Was I influential? Hopefully the answers to these questions will reveal what I am doing well as a leader and what I need to work on. Dissemination: I will be sharing this proposal with my honors advisor and professor, so it will be posted on my learning portfolio. This audience is relevant due to the fact that they are the ones who will be critiquing/grading it. I hope that my reflection questions will reveal what I am focusing on in the way of leadership and what I hope to accomplish with this project. Project Advisor: Paul Wittekind, PhD Head Coach of Junior Team USA Cell: 513-602-0745 Email: paulwittekind@yahoo.com Budget: Cost of food: 20 Euros per day (7 days in Wales=140 Euros total=$190) Round Trip Plane Ticket Cost: $1200 Hotel Costs: $715 Personal Items Cost: $100 Transportation from Hotel to Pool (most likely via bus): $100 per person Total Cost: $2,305