Dan Spainhour

Like most coaches I really like quotes. I think they can be a powerful motivational tool for players. I published A Season In Words in 2004. The book was my attempt to take you through your season and provide you with motivational quotes for situations as they arise. There are hundreds of thousands of quote books, and many are targeted to coaches. However, they were not organized as the season is organized. The original Season in Words became a big hit with coaches. In 2020, I "evolved" from coaching and began to focus more on my company which now includes our monthly Coaching and Leadership Journal. In a conversation with my coaching friend Stan Jones, Associate Head Coach for Florida State Basketball, he asked me what I've been up to since I retired from coaching. I told him a few of the things I was doing including organizing our annual Coaching and Leadership Summit. He said, "I thought you'd have a new Season In Words book out by now." That got me thinking. I went through the original book and even though many quotes are timeless, there were some like all things that had become outdated. I decided I would keep some of the old while including some new quotes I have added to my files since the eariler publication. I decided to keep the same format and chapters/files because the feedback I got about the layout was incredibly positive. I hope you can find some words from this new edition that will not only make you a better coach but also an even better person. --Dan Spainhour

Everyone needs a good story to tell. The greatest leaders teach with stories, they know that storytelling is useful in far more situations than many people realize. Thanks to some great mentors, I became very interested at a young age in learning what parables or stories I could use to teach lessons to my team. Here are some stories I have collected from my 34 years in the business. -Dan Spainhour

When I used to hear all the talk about affirmations, I had a tendency to think of some New Age feel good stuff that had little to do with coaching. However, the more I investigated the process of affirmations I came to realize maybe it was only the term affirmations that caused me not to take the process seriously. I mean I've always believed in the importance of self-talk and the effects it has on performance. Like most coaches, I posted daily quotes in our locker room for the team to read and recite back during practice. I know motivation is different things for different people and athletes need inspiration that is designed specifically for them. I also believed as Peter Davies says, "Motivation is like food for the brain, you cannot get enough in one setting." So I started to give my players specific individual statements I asked them to say to themselves over and over. I would give them new statements at different times throughout the year based upon areas that I wanted to see them improve. I immediately saw results. My players seem more confident and our performance has improved since I instituted this process.

In 2004 I put together A Season In Words: A Coach's Guide To Motivation From The Preseason To The Postseason. Early on in my coaching career I started collecting quotes and organizing them as a season unfolds. I thought of things that normally occur within a season and I placed what I thought to be appropriate quotes in corresponding files. A Season In Words was my original quote collection and each section was one of my files. Being a big believer in quotes, I also had a separate folder for quotes that came just from coaches. I thought who better to inspire than people going through the same thing I was going through. As my collection of coaches' quotes grew I realized my collection was completely unorganized. So, just as I had done with A Season In Words, I put quotes directly from coaches in files that corresponded to a season. It just made it so much easier to quickly find motivation that I needed. This book contains the quotes I had in my coach's quote files.