and political divisiveness and a racial reckoning. Set in the inner sanctum melting pot of a football team locker room, former athletes Mackey and West draw on their experiences to present a story that illustrates how teams with players and coaches from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities ‘come together around a common goal. They work together, sacrifice for each other, and use their diversity as a strength to make each other better.’ The glaring conclusion is that our families and neighborhoods, indeed our country, could benefit from practicing the story’s locker room principles and lessons for the betterment of us all. This is a timely, moving, and thought-provoking read.”
—Michael Hurd, historian and author of Thursday Night Lights: The Story of Black High School Football in Texas
The Locker Room
How Great Teams Heal Hurt, Overcome Adversity, and Build Unity
DAMON WEST Bestselling Coauthor of The Coffee Bean
STEPHEN MACKEY Player Development Coach
Copyright © 2022 by Damon West, LLC and 2W International, LLC. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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COVER ART & DESIGN: PAUL McCARTHY
I dedicate this to my father, Bob West. As a sports writer, you used sports to teach me many valuable life lessons. I still look up to you today, just as I did when I was a kid.
Love,
Damon
I dedicate this to my bride, Teressa. Thank you for your love, support, humility, and grace.
Love,
Stephen
Preface
At the heart of coaching is a deep-rooted commitment to helping people become the best versions of themselves. The role of a coach is to see the potential in people and then do everything within their power to help them get there. As a coach, you're less concerned with the end goal—although every coach wants to win!—and more concerned with the progress your athletes make.
Great coaches, as with other great leaders, must be willing to give the best of themselves to set the example for the cultures they wish to build. In that spirit—to give our best to help you become your best—we have created a short story about a team, hurt and divided, which needed the Locker Room to help them heal, unite, and overcome.
Before entering the Locker Room, we would like to offer some insight into a few of the choices made.
We chose the Locker Room as the location of this story because we both have experienced the power of the Locker Room in sports. We are both former athletes (we won't talk about who was the better athlete) and have seen the Locker Room break down barriers and transform lives. While the Locker Room is a physical place for athletes, it has its analogues for students in a classroom, executives in a boardroom, workers in any workplace, service men and women in the Armed Forces, and people in their communities. The Locker Room can be made up of 100 people or just two people sitting across from each other.
The Locker Room is anywhere that:
1 People from different backgrounds, with different hurts, hang-ups, and histories come together for a common goal.
2 The standard is the standard, and it isn't lowered because of talent, position, or for short-term gain.
3 Diversity of skill, ability, and personality aren't challenges to overcome, but the very strengths that will allow a team to overcome any challenge.
4 Making a mistake doesn't make you a mistake.
5 Hard days are endured; hard conversations are engaged; hard truths are received; hard consequences grow into encouragement to become your best.
6 Success of the individual is always secondary to the success of the team.
Sports felt an appropriate setting for our story because sports has the power to transcend boundaries; the lessons learned in sports eclipse athletics, helping people become the fullness of who they were created to be.
People from different backgrounds come together in the Locker Room to unite around a common goal. The Locker Room is the setting to engage in difficult conversations about race and discrimination because these are issues that coaches, athletes,
