Army Crew Team Case Analysis

Q 1. Why does the Varsity team lose to the JV Team?

The varsity team was not synchronised, they did not have collaboration among the team
members. They were not working together as a team. Coach P was not able to facilitate the
necessary team building exercises such as goals of the team, building trust among the team
members and was not able to solve the conflicts between the team members. Varsity team
played the blame game; some said the teams poor performance is due to other team
members, some even blamed the river on which they practised. None of its members
possessed leadership abilities instead; they accused each other for the teams failure.

On the other hand the JV team had high synchronization among the team members, which is
the basic requirement in this type of sport. They worked as a team together and had trust
among themselves, which kept them winning the game every time.

Q2. What should Coach P. have done differently earlier in the season to resolve this
problem?

The Army Varsity Crew seems to be a non-adaptive and dysfunctional group. We are able to
infer that they are still caught in the Storming phase of the team development, which implies
that theyve not yet arrived at the Norming phase where trust among the members has been
largely attained. The efforts of the coach to identify the weak link in the group didnt help in
controlling the conflict which was brewing between the team members. As we all are aware
that conflict causes personal frustration and results in loss of efficiency as depicted by the
Army crew some experts suggest that counselling and simply listening with patience and
understanding. Allowing a person to express his or her feelings may alleviate the frustration
and help to boost the problem-solving capabilities. Unfortunately the issue with the Varsity
team came into the picture too late to be resolved before the Nationals.

From the starting, Coach P didnt address the construct of team building activity. His main
focus was in discovering the best 8 instead of producing the best 16. This characterisation
between the Varsity and JV boats, created the environment that resulted into the conflict.
Instead of focussing on the individuals, and the individual Varsity/ JV groups, the coach
should have promoted the environment that would sustain in a complete team effort. The step
he took for separating the Varsity and the Junior Varsity team, he planted the seed of
separation between individuals, who know identify themselves as Good/Superior Athletes
or the Less/inferior Athletes. This turned out to be a disastrous step for the entire team. In
constructing the Army Crew, Coach P should have deserted the labels of Varsity and
Junior Varsity in favour of the labels that would have characterized the either team as the
Good Athletes. A team building activity or an event could have included all the crew
members at any given time during the season, where the best rowers are being identified as
those that row best together.

The JV team have clearly developed a team focus. In all of their interactions between each
other, there was never a doubt about the capabilities of any other rower, but only the positive
aspect or view of the entire team was represented as a whole. JV team developed a
companionship and believed that each member was equally important and talented and gave
respect to each other. This attitude was formulated by the JV maxim, We will succeed
together, and we will fail together. This attitude clearly indicated that as a Whole, they
were more superior, if divided into parts.

On the other hand Varsity team didnt develop this team centring approach, but continued
to criticise the individual efforts, and never even once attributing success or failure to the
entire team. Coach P, had several opportunities to counter this, during the Atlanta Retreat by
concentrating more on the entire teams successes rather than the individual contributions.
Coach P should have appointed, a captain instead of taking all the leadership on himself. This
attitude of continuous focus on individual strengths, techniques and weakness gravely
weakened the dependency and trust, Varsity members felt for one another.
Q3. What action do you recommend for Coach P. and why?

Our recommendation is that JV boat can compete at Nationals. The JV boat has
made a better team work and co-ordination and right now it is the best
performing boat. Though Varsity can expand their team work in near future, the
fact is that Coach P, an experienced Master level coach has tried to reach
Varsity team on mental state but failure makes it unlikely that it is not possible to
achieve in coming four days. On restructuring the crew over the boat is also not
feasible option in given time and given JV members unwillingness defer from
their team and the risk to form a new functional team in short span. On
promotion JV team to varsity, Coach P can tap into performing team psychology
and devote remaining days to enhance their performance. This makes Junior
Varsity in streamline to make achievements.