When coaches at Liberty (Mo.) High School say their athletic director wrote the book on running a successful program, they're not kidding. All the school's teams operate around a program-development manual called The Book, which serves as a blueprint for every sport offering from the middle school through varsity level. It's an idea that has helped make Liberty one of the most successful and respected athletic departments in the state.

The Book is the brainchild of Athletic Director Steve Butler and his longtime friend, Bob Troutwine, a psychologist and consultant who has worked with the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and college teams. "We set out to transform Liberty from a traditional athletic program to a learning athletic program," says Butler. "The Book is a guide that teaches coaches how to develop their programs and their athletes. It's like a track for them to run on, with benchmarks and learning tools built in."

Butler's manual has turned a struggling athletic department into the envy of its conference rivals, with seven state titles and 14 state title appearances in various sports over the past eight years. A key reason is that it puts sport coaches at all different levels on the same page, so that athletes receive cumulative instruction from one grade to the next.

"We wanted to make sure there was a solid connection between the high school programs and the eighth- and ninth-grade programs," says Butler. "When you're teaching math, you can't teach division unless students already know their multiplication tables. We wanted to apply that same principle to the way we teach athletics."

Specific goals are listed for each level, and are broken into physical, mental, and character categories. For instance, the mental goals for eighth-grade student-athletes are to learn safe and proper techniques for the sport, understand all the rules, and develop the ability to perform drills and plays successfully. The following year, the mental goals are expanded to include learning more plays and techniques, understanding strategies and game plans, and performing at full speed with few errors. By the time they reach varsity, athletes' mental goals include scouting opponents, following practice scripts, and being involved in game analysis.

"If we're teaching the bird-dog step in eighth-grade football, we'll teach what it is, how to do it, and the drills that go along with it," Butler explains. "So when the kids reach high school and the coach tells them to do the bird-dog step in practice, they know that terminology and what they are expected to do. The coach can build on the fundamentals already taught and add new things."

To coordinate the progressive learning process, The Book also lays out a series of "learning slopes," graphs that represent instruction areas like sport-specific technique, fundamentals, and plays. Benchmarks are set up for each level, so all coaches know where their team fits into the progression and what they need to do to best prepare their athletes. Butler says coaches each devise their own practice plans, strategies, and methods, but The Book tells them what they should seek to accomplish and explains how to track their progress.

Head Boys' Basketball Coach Roger Stirtz is quick to credit The Book with laying the foundation for his team's success, which includes five conference championships and five district championships since he arrived in 1994. "Players come to the varsity team knowing what to expect, and we know what to expect of them," he says. "They know our plays, they know our strategies, and they know our philosophy because it's been taught to them consistently throughout the program. That allows us to teach them more advanced things during varsity practices."

The manual also goes beyond athlete development to provide guidance for coaches on other subjects, like how to communicate with parents and how to handle cutting athletes from a team. "We 'select' players, we don't 'cut' them—that's a positive versus a negative," Stirtz says. "Each athlete who isn't selected has an individual conference with all the coaches, and we talk about areas of improvement and ways they can still be involved with the program. We also invite them to try again next year. Telling a kid that he's not going to be on the team is the worst part of a coach's job, but by following a process, we know we're doing it in the best way. The guide tells us how to do that."

Another portion of The Book focuses on recruiting, with instruction for coaches on how to help athletes look most appealing to college programs. "It helps our coaches to communicate the characteristics of an athlete in specific terms that a college coach is interested in," says Butler. "Our coaches can talk about a kid's mental abilities, how fast he learns, his personal qualities, his character, and how coachable he is, in addition to talking about why he's a great athlete."

With all the success that Liberty's athletic department has had since first adopting The Book almost 15 years ago, Butler says that the program and the athletes it produces now have a reputation that speaks for itself. "When a kid graduates from Liberty, the college coach knows they're coming out of a place that has a development curriculum, that emphasizes strength and conditioning, and that puts a premium on character," he says. "It's something we take pride in, something our athletes take pride in, and it's helped us to be successful."

For more information about The Book, contact Liberty High School Athletic Director Steve Butler at: sbutler@liberty.k12.mo.us.