'No Cheating, No Whining. Stand Up in the Rain'

For this week's Saturday Blueprint, we continued our conversation with Paul Assaiante, the winningest coach in NCAA history.

January 07, 2023

The Saturday Blueprint recently outlined some lessons from Paul Assaiante, a 17-time National Championship squash coach at Trinity College.

The Daily Coach continued its discussion with him about processing defeat, why it seems the fear of failure has never been greater, and maintaining motivation after already reaching the top of the mountain.

This interview has been condensed and edited for brevity.

Is there a particular coaching quality you have now that’s different from when you started out?

Empathy has been an emotion and a skillset that I’ve developed over time. When I was first coaching, I’d have to say that I was very ego attached. This wasn’t what I did, this was who I was — and that’s very unhealthy. It took me a long time to put all of that down and understand I was there for the students, not the other way around.

If it’s about you, then you’re missing the boat. All of these sports psychologists make millions conveying that if you’re competing and you’re tied to the outcome, then you’re destined to be unhappy most of the time. If you’re a coach and you’re trying to manage the performance of 18- to 20-year-old young men and women and tie your sense of self-worth to that, that’s a formula for disaster. It’s not going to work.

When defeat happens, what's your process to assess what went wrong?

Let’s talk about the preparation. Maybe we had terrible preparation coming into the contest. You’ve been sick, you’ve been overwhelmed with exams. That’s going to happen in life.

One thing I heard at West Point was, “Every day, you wake up a different person.” Today, perhaps, you’re only 60 percent of your best self. My thing is, well, you have to give 100 percent of that 60. That’s the best you can do. That factors into the outcome. At that moment, you can talk to a person about what really happened here. And maybe the answer is that person was just better than you on that day or that team was just better than you on that day.

Are there any instances of learning from defeat that particularly stick out to you?

When I was coaching at West Point, I had a squash player who played No. 3 or 4 on the team. He is now a four-star General. He was a lefty and had had a great season. He was 16-3 and we were going down to play Navy, and the young man he was going to play was only O.K. He had a .500 record. Our guy was going to end his career pummeling his Navy opponent.

Well, the coach at the time down there did a masterful job in preparing his player on how to play against a lefty, and our guy lost. He was devastated. I got on the bus next to him, and I said, “Rich, in a lefty-righty matchup, the key is the backhand crosscourt." I gave him some strategy and he said, “Coach, that’s great, but my career is over and I just lost to Navy.” I said, “O.K., that’s tough.”

A week later we went down to the singles championships and he looks at the draw and if he wins his first match, his second match is against the guy from Navy. He got through the first match, and he went onto the court to play the Navy guy and he said, “This proves there is a God.” He just pounded him.

You cannot show bravery unless you’re first afraid. You cannot show resilience unless you first fail. Don’t be afraid of failing. But we as parents will do anything to make sure our children don’t experience failure. And really, we’re just crippling them.

Why do you think that’s changed and why do people seem to fear failure so much now?

I think it’s generational. My father was in the Korean War. They didn’t have anything. They wanted to make sure we had a better experience. We had a lot. And it goes on and on, and I also think it’s social. We’re more into exclusionary activities like private country clubs and private school and then we’re on this competitive treadmill of to get to the next level, our child has to be almost perfect. The margin becomes so narrow. But who cares? Unfortunately, that’s where we are.

I was on a panel with Dr. Jim Loehr, who in my mind is the eminent guy. We were talking to 500 parents in Pennsylvania. Only he could get away with this. He got up with a white board and said, “Alright, everybody. Give me your big three. What were your hopes for your child when he/she was born?” It was, “I hope my child is healthy. I hope my child is happy, etc.”

Now, give me your big three, your child reaches a certain age and now you want to put them into an extra-curricular activity, playing the oboe, running track, trying out for the football team. What are the big three? “Hope my child develops confidence through the activity, hope that our child learns to play nicely in the sandbox.”

Then, he turns around to the audience and says, “In what stage of this whole process did you collectively lose your minds?” It was exactly the truth. "Oh my God, that’s not what we started out with, but look where we are now." It’s too, too much pressure.

You’ve won so much in your career and you’re still doing it every day. What inspires you?

Success was what I was interested in when I started out. Now it’s just the shared time with the young men. When I was coaching the U.S. team, also the women, it’s the shared time, being there for them, knowing we shared a special moment. My job is to try to help them frame what happened.

We’ve won championships where I was very unhappy with everything about that year. And there are years we didn’t win where I was so happy for the boys. I’m much closer to the end than the beginning. I would like for our team this year to win a championship because I would like the boys to experience that and how cool that is to be on a campus with 2,000 students and walk across it. I want that for them. Honest to God, I have enough. It doesn’t change how I’m going to look at myself.

On the table next to me is a box with 17 National Championship rings. When I retire from this school, that box is going to stay behind because those rings belong to the college. They don’t belong to me.

What also motivates me is on the court right now is a student from Malaysia and the students are finishing up exams and they’re all going to go home and he can’t go home. It’s too far away. We’re going to spend Christmas together along with some of his teammates.

It’s that shared time that motivates me every day to make it meaningful. It isn’t all going to be fun. They’re going to make mistakes and they’re going to screw up. The lesson is when you make a mistake, be a man, stand up and own it. If the dean calls you into his office, walk in and say whatever it is, I’m willing to take the consequences.

No cheating, no whining, stand up in the rain and ultimately become a contributing member of society. It may sound sappy, but I really do believe it.

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