Varsity Case Study

What are some of the root causes of Varsity’s losses? Despite of selecting the best rowers for the team, Varsity team is frequently outperformed by the Junior Varsity team consisting of the bottom eight rowers. There are many reasons attributing to this abnormal result. Observing this unanticipated result, it is quite evident that just putting together the most skilled people in a group does not solely account for high performance. (The whole less than the sum of the parts). The Coach also plays an important role in the behavior of Varsity team. By separating rowers only on the basis of individual performance, and tagging one as the expected team to win obviously, caused a cleft between the Varsity and Junior Varsity teams. This could possibly rob Varsity team of their motivation to perform better, as they have nothing to gain by competing against a group which is lower in standards. Coach P did not emphasize on the psychological factors as much as he emphasized on the physical factors when putting a team together. He recruited the top individual performers and stringed them together without acknowledging the importance of the team to perform as a unit. Applying concepts from discipline of teams, we know that a team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. As we observe the behavior of the members of Varsity team, it can be noted that they a group of individuals but not a team. The crew depends heavily on the teamwork as it requires all its members to be in perfect sync and coordinate with each other to propel the boat. Especially, the members of the team need to trust one another to refrain for reacting in different ways to a mistake done by one of them, and instead trust that the person will retract from the mistake by himself/herself. These qualities were lacking in the Varsity team. They did not develop the sense of