When I stepped away from coaching at Twin Falls High School, I thought I understood what it took to build a program.
We had it all. Great assistants. Supportive administrators. Athletes who knew how to compete.
Practices were sharp. Effort was expected.
Culture wasn’t something we talked about. It was something we lived.
Then I took a job at Lighthouse Christian School.
A small 2A school. A chance to rebuild an athletic program from the ground up.
And I’ll be honest.
It was a wake-up call.
The Part I Got Wrong
I loved the kids right away.
They were good kids. Respectful. Coachable. The kind of group any coach would be glad to walk into a gym with.
But something was missing.
They didn’t work hard.
At least, that’s what I thought.
We lost.
And lost again.
And again.
Nine straight losses to start the season.
I remember coming home after that ninth loss and telling my wife, “I’m done babying them. I’m going to coach my way. Take it or leave it.”
My assistants agreed.
It felt like a turning point.
But the real turning point had already started. I just didn’t recognize it yet.
About a Year In, Something Clicked
They were trying.
They just didn’t know how to work hard.
That was on me.
At Twin Falls, our kids grew up in the program. Effort was taught early, at the youth level, long before I ever got them. By the time they walked into our gym as freshmen, it was second nature.
Nobody had to define it. Nobody had to teach it.
At Lighthouse, they hadn’t been shown that yet.
Not once.
I had spent months holding them to a standard that nobody had ever explained to them.
That’s not a discipline problem. That’s a teaching problem.
So We Changed How We Coached
We started watching film. Not just of us, but of teams that played hard.
We compared.
We pointed it out.
That’s a closeout. That’s a sprint back on defense. That’s what it looks like when someone takes a charge and gets up.
We stopped assuming and started defining what “working hard” actually looked like in our gym.
Then came a moment I’ll never forget.
We started four players in a game. Not because they were the most talented, but because they were the only ones consistently working hard in practice and on film.
That was the whole criteria.
And something crazy happened.
We went up 10 points in the first quarter.
I looked at my assistant and said, “Go pull the fire alarm. Let’s get out of here and call it a win.”
We didn’t pull the alarm.
But we did turn a corner.
We won 3 of our last 4 games.
More importantly, we started building something.
You Don’t Get a Sun Tan in One Day
Here’s the lesson.
It takes time to build a culture of work.
You don’t just demand it and expect it to show up.
You have to teach it.
Model it.
Reinforce it.
And most importantly, be patient with it.
Because you don’t get a sun tan in one day.
Effort isn’t a character trait people either have or don’t have. It’s a skill, and like every other skill, somebody has to teach it before you can hold anyone accountable to it.
This Isn’t Just a Gym Problem
For business leaders, coaches, and educators, this matters more than ever.
We’re working with people who haven’t always been in environments that demanded consistency.
Some haven’t experienced five straight days of focused work in a long time.
That doesn’t make them lazy.
It means they haven’t been shown the standard yet.
That was my mistake early on.
I assumed they knew.
Once I realized they didn’t, and took responsibility for teaching it, everything changed.
Those two years at Lighthouse gave me some of the most humbling and most humorous moments of my career.
And I’ll be sharing more of those stories soon.
Trust me.
There are plenty.
This story first appeared on Matt’s Substack. Read the original post — “I Thought They Didn’t Work Hard. I Was Wrong.” — and subscribe to the newsletter for short stories and practical lessons like this one every week.
