Jim Sochor's Core Team Values
Jim Sochor served as the head football coach and college athletics administrator for the University of California, Davis. During his time at Davis, Sochor won 18 consecutive conference championships and was named the NCAA Division II National Coach of the Year in 1983. Sochor was also inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1999.
This video was shot as part of the 2008 Youth Sports Awards Sponsored by Deloitte, where Sochor was the recipient of the Ronald L. Jensen Award for Lifetime Achievement and participated in a Q&A session.
In 1970 when he became head coach at UC Davis, he developed three central values for his team: trust, unity, and togetherness. He talks about not just articulating these values, but truly living them. For example, if someone was late to practice you trusted they had a good reason to be late. If it continued to happen, Sochor explained in a positive way how that behavior impacts the team, rather than punish. His whole philosophy was about eliminating the negative and focusing the program on caring, sharing, and positivity. He wanted to raise players' level of self esteem.
This leads PCA Founder, Jim Thompson, to point out how Sochor was able to get players to do things they didn't realize they could by filling emotional tanks and focusing on the positive.