THE ARMY CREW TEAM

CASE ANALYSIS

Why does the Varsity team lose to JV team?

The two most important things required for winning in rowing was individual
skills and team coordination. The crew formed by the coach when the practice
started had to bifurcate the Varsity and Junior Varsity team. The Varsity team
was a cross functional team as it consisted of various members performing
different functions like 1 was a coxswain, 7th and 8th needed good coordination
etc. As always by various trials and errors coach formed Varsity team but then
they lost against JV mainly because of lack of coordination. The team was not
effective as it didnt have individual satisfaction and was not able to achieve high
performance. An effective team stays for a long term and they thought that
coach made a mistake by making trials and errors, changing the last years
winning team. While on the other hand though JV had less members who had
strength in them individually, as a team they were effective as they were able to
provide a synergy while racing against the Varsity team. Also one of the reasons
could be that JV had nothing to lose, they didnt have any expectations which
they had to fulfil so they got along with each other easily and tried to accomplish
a certain goal which everyone had in their mind - winning. They also trusted
each other much more than the Varsity team members did in their team which is
quite visible from the mails Coach received, and in the end when everyone
started blaming each other for their defeat. Each one in Varsity thought only
they were performing and no one else (they didnt have compatible needs). The
disruptive behaviour in the team has led to limit the effectiveness of the team
performance like the junior rower thought he was not able to influence senior
members of the team and one representative mailed about Jim showing a social
facilitation that he is not comfortable working with him. And it was seen that
senior coaches believed the psychological factors were the most important for a
team to win in rowing and these factors were pressurising Varsity team
members against each other, creating a negative vibe in the team. Thus all
these factors together led to Varsity team losing to the JV team.

What should Coach P. have done differently earlier in the

season to resolve this problem?
Coach P had sensed well in advance that things werent good in the team
of the best 8 players they had chosen. This was quite evident that Varsity
which should be winning over JV with an exceptional margin was now
struggling hard to win against them. Being the strongest team Varsity
should have performed better as a team irrespective of the individual
differences.
When the Coach was experimenting and analyzing the different
combinations of the teams he witnessed that individually Varsity members
won over the JV members but when all 8 of them were put together
clearly JV won over Varsity. Now when he realized that the team on the
whole was a problem, he could have called the meeting earlier which he
called at the end which was just before the race.

Had he called the meeting earlier the team would have sought the issues
amongst itself and maybe would have performed better. The expert
advice that he wanted to give was too late now for the team as they had
already formed differences. Had he concentrated on the teams
individually on a personal level earlier this situation wouldnt have come
into picture. The collective intelligence of JV team was much higher than
that of Varsity. Varsity had internal conflicts whereas JV was internally
motivated. The entire JV team experienced distributive leadership. The
team JV had an attitude of NOTHING TO LOOSE. This idea of positivity
could be promoted in the Varsity team by the coach so that in spite of the
Ego that they had developed because they were great rowers individually
they could together perform to win. The coach could have easily solved
the differences in the new team by taking these small steps.

What action do you recommend for Coach P. and why?

The coach had three options:
Switch the Varsity and JV boats
Switch individual boat members
Intervene to improve the Varsity boats performance
Of the three alternatives mentioned above the Coach should have
considered the third alternative of intervening to improve the Varsity
teams performance.
Considering the performance of the teams the coach knew very well
that the intrinsic motivation of JV team was high and they evaluated
themselves on a global front. On the other hand Varsity criticized its
own team members without taking ownership of their own actions.
The program decision taken by the coach backfired. Egos developed
amongst the team members and nobody took the ownership of the
actions. By intervening Coach P could have avoided this blame game
and help them resolve these issues. By intervening he could give a
direction to their wrong thought process and by this he could improve
the performance of the team. The team would then think on a larger
objective and not the petty issues that they were facing.

Intervening of the coach was required at an earlier stage and this

could have avoided the team from falling apart now right before the
final practice races. It is not enough if the individual team members
are good but they should be good as a team.
The case brings out the disparity in the teams clearly which are visible
during their performances. The Coachs alternative would be the best
in this case to resolve the issues in the team.