Virtue formation is the first pillar of SportsLeader.

The key to this pillar: If athletes are taught to love the grind of developing good habits (virtue formation), they will eventually discover that the process will love themselves and the team back in personal strength and maximum team success.

Matt Campbell, head football coach at Iowa State University, just gave a great talk to his team after a win that is worth your time regardless of the sport you coach.

This is why our motto is Virtue = Strength.

Our hope is that you as a coach/teacher/leader will embrace virtue and love teaching/coaching it.

There are 2 very different approaches to coaching:

Positive: Teach others to love the strength of virtue, to love its goodness, power and beauty. And even more - to WANT to teach others to love virtue.

That is a great question to ask yourself about your next captains: Do my Senior leaders love teaching the Freshmen to love virtue?

Negative: Don't do this, don't do that, this is not acceptable ...

This style of coaching only creates athletes who fear your reaction, who fear the negative consequences.

That might work for a limited amount of time but eventually it builds resentment, hatred and disgust. They only do it to out of fear or to please coach, nothing really changes in their heart.

Lasting success, lifelong lessons and becoming a better human being do not include those ingredients.

This is what we are striving to convey in our Virtue of the Week materials. Give you tools, stories, quotes, images, videos, songs ... to help you teach your athletes to love virtue.

If your athletes WANT to achieve greatness, if they love the beauty of goodness ... you will win more ... you will create a culture of winning.

Because virtue = strength.

SportsLeader