1% Better
Dan Heefner
What is success? There are as many ways to measure success as there are individual players. There has been a great deal of on-field success in the DBU baseball program through the years, both as a team and for individual players. Individually we have had 33 players drafted in the last six years--14 in the first ten rounds. This year we had two, Burl Carraway and Jimmy Glowenke, selected in the second round.
We believe the success these players have achieved is a result of the one of the pillars of our programs culture--development. Hard work, perseverance, the pursuit of excellence, and coachability are all traits that are passed down from our older players to the newcomers. Our goal is to get one percent better every day. That may not sound like much, but if you stack one percent on top of each other every day for three or four years you’ve turned yourself into a totally different player.
The second and equally important part of our culture to development is humility, which we define as a focus on others and not ourselves. As each player is trying to develop his own abilities to reach his goals, humility is the glue that enables us to have great team chemistry year in and year out. There is no way to quantify it but we believe our focus on humility is a big reason we’ve made nine NCAA Regionals since 2008 (including the last six in a row), and a Super Regional and it’s the reason we’re one of only three programs in the country to win 40 games for the past six years.
As satisfying as it is to see our players succeed on the field, I am just as proud of who they have become in the process and what they are doing when their playing careers are over. We have dozens of former Patriots either coaching at the high school, college or professional level—men like Austin Knight with the Seattle Mariners, Chris McMullen at Mansfield Legacy High School or Victor Black with the Pittsburgh Pirates-- or serving in full-time ministry, like Costi Hinn. It gives me so much satisfaction to see those young men thriving as coaches and pastors. And as I learned as a young collegiate ballplayer myself, coaching and ministry are both distinct callings that God can use to change lives.
I was absolutely committed to baseball and, even from a young age, I knew I wanted to coach when I was finished playing. I played first at the University of Northern Iowa and then transferred to Olivet Nazarene, where I was an NAIA All-American my junior and senior years. But I also got involved with a campus ministry called the Navigators while in college, and as my commitment to my faith grew so did the questioning of my career path.
I wondered whether I should forgo coaching for a calling to campus ministry, where I could have the kind of impact on other college students that Jim Luebe with Navigators had on me. But I felt like the Lord said: “You don't have to choose between coaching and ministry. Coaching is your ministry.”
That was a turning point for me and it has helped me with my perspective as I have coached at Creighton, Northern Iowa, and Dallas Baptist. As the Patriots head coach for the past thirteen seasons, we have had a great deal of success as the world defines success. But success and accolades mean little without the realization that we are helping our players grow in their relationship with God while developing an understanding of their own callings as they follow Him.
Thanks to our commitment to development we have seen players be totally transformed on the field. We have also seen numerous players make the same kind of transformations in their character and faith. We have a discipleship program, taught by our coaches, which sets the stage for where the biggest difference is made—player-to-player. Every year we have been blessed to have some tremendous players who have also been very committed to their relationship with Christ. The new players come in and first they admire them for their baseball ability but then they see their work ethic, humility and perspective of why they play the way they do, and they see a living example of what the coaches are teaching. Witnessing the difference our players make on each other has helped me embrace the idea that inspiration is more powerful than motivation.
As I heard in a podcast from Life.Church pastor Craig Groeschel, motivation is when you’re pushing a person to do something, but inspiration is when you get that person to want to it. There is a time and a place where a coach needs to motivate or push their players; but I’ve come to learn that walking alongside them and seeking to inspire is far more effective. Dwight Eisenhower put it this way, “Pull the string and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.” We have found inspiration to be more effective and more enjoyable, both for the players and for us as coaches.
Many people will judge the success of our program by the number of games and championships we win or by the number of All-Americans and draft picks we have. But my staff and I know that what is most important is not what you accomplish but who you become. Our ultimate success is something we will see years after they graduate as we see the type of husbands, fathers, employees and Christ followers they become and as we see them pass to others what they have learned as a result of being a part of the DBU baseball program.