Why From the Rough is great for coaches and entrepreneurs
Any coach who is not leading a revenue-producing sports program, like football or men’s basketball, is operating on a thin budget and resembles an entrepreneur more than a salaried employee. So it was with Dr. Catana Starks. She drove the team to and from tournaments, cooked many of their meals, washed their clothes, secured volunteer instruction from professional golfers, and enabled her team to overcome severe resource disadvantages. More so than other sports films, From the Rough celebrates the entrepreneurship that great coaches of non-revenue sports, particularly at historically black colleges, have had to master. She was like an entrepreneur in another way: she had to start the team from scratch.
The film also is a great story about a different style of coaching and leadership, a more collaborative style. Unlike most sports films, in which the coach drives every result, this film presents a different and more modern and realistic coaching model.
Relative to this audience, the central theme is how one woman overcame severely limited resources to start and produce a winning team.
How to Use It
The film would be very useful for either academies or seminars that teach men and women how to coach a non-revenue sport. It also would be very useful in any gathering of aspiring or current entrepreneurs on how to do more with less, and how to adapt to adverse conditions. The book The Lean Start-Up presents a blueprint for entrepreneurs based on the foundational principle of “validated learning.” Both the real Dr. Starks and the Coach Starks portrayed in the film are expert practitioners of adaptive and validated learning.