Flyers Walk the Plank for Team Unity

Members of the Sandhills Community College basketball team recently participated in team building exercises designed to help develop team-work and chemistry on a squad that will go into the first official practice on October 1 with 11 new players.

The two-hour program, consisting of both inside and field work was conducted by Charlie McHarney, who served for 26 years in the U.S. Air Force. He is currently employed by The O'Neal School as Director of Leadership and Character Development, and as the coach of the middle school girls' basketball team.

The classroom part of the program, held in the Game Room at the Dempsey Student Center, was designed to get the players and coaches interacting with each other. They were asked to jot down on a piece of paper three things they considered themselves very good at. McHarney then asked each person to reveal their attributes to the audience.

The final hour was spent at the beach volleyball courts with McHarney first teaching the players the objectives and rules of the "Walk the Plank" exercise.

In the initial exercise the returning players competed against the newcomers to complete the course. Each team had to move from wooden plank to wooden plank without falling off and with the members always connected to each other by a rope.

Communication and a high level of concentration were required in order to be successful. Flyers Head Coach Mike Apple was impressed by how well the freshmen group worked together.

"It was a great exercise because you see leaders emerge," he said afterward. "You always see your point guards as necessarily your leaders, but I saw a lot of guys who are not point guards step up and take charge."

All of the players were grouped together for the final exercise with McHarney timing it and adding time when there was a fall or disconnection.

"The biggest thing I took away was everybody working together, building that team bond," sophomore guard LeNijel Robinson said. "We have a lot of new guys and a lot of returnees. Building chemistry is a real big thing that will help us down the road."

Nearly fully recovered from a wrist injury that caused him to miss the final nine games of last season, the product of Concord High School compared the pitfalls encountered in negotiating the wooden planks with the need to be able to bounce back from adversity during a basketball season.

"Holding the rope is just like accountability," he said. "You drop the rope and it's like letting your teammates down.  That's something we can't do before the season and during the season. 

"You can let your team down by not doing the work, not going to class. We're getting there. We're going to get there."

According to McHarney the exercise is designed for smaller groups, but he still felt the endeavor was a successful one.

"It was a lot bigger group than I expected for a basketball team, but still a good group," he said. "It's usually hard to get big group going in such a short amount of time, but I think there were enough big personalities in the group that got them going.

"Even from the question and answer period inside, they were willing to talk. You could tell they were going to be really involved. It was a very fun group."

C. Bergmann