On-the-rise high school basketball coach dishes key leadership lessons

One of the coolest spoils of winning a basketball championship — in high school or college — is the tradition of cutting down the net. Players and coaches, usually capped by the head coach, take turns on a ladder, scissors in hand, cutting of one 12 loops.

Lakewood Ranch High School Boys Basketball Coach Jeremy Schiller wanted that experience so bad for his players he executed a shrewd leadership technique: he had the team practice cutting down the nets, a real life feel-it experience. “We wanted them to get a piece of it,” Schiller says, “so they knew exactly what it would feel like.”