The Good, Better, Best Chant › For coaches

Run the Good, Better, Best Chant With Your Own Team

Youth football, basketball, a classroom, a swim team. Here's exactly how Ben Johnson runs it, how to make it yours, and three free posters you can print tonight.

Why it works for kids

The chant praises improvement, not winning. "Your good" is a kid's effort, and the rhyme says that effort is the thing that moves. That's why it crossed from an NFL locker room to youth fields across Chicago in a single season (Fox 32), and why it had been a classroom staple for decades before that (who said it).

How Ben Johnson runs it

1. Only after wins. This is the whole design. If you do it after every game it becomes noise. If you do it only after wins it becomes something the team wants (ESPN).
2. Game balls first. Johnson hands out game balls and says what he needs to say. The chant is the finale, not the opener (Bleacher Nation).
3. Coach calls, team answers. One line at a time. Don't say it with them; say it to them and make them give it back.
4. Loud and short. Four lines, then the break. Under fifteen seconds.
5. Your own break. "Bears on three" becomes "Wolves on three," "Tigers on three," or whatever you are. At Johnson's high school it was "Big. Green. Machine." (Greensboro Sports)

The script

Two examples

Youth football, 10U. Saturday, you win 14–6. Huddle at midfield, helmets off. Give the game ball to the lineman who never gets one. Then: "Good, better, best!" They echo. Four lines, "Cougars on three," done. Monday at practice, name one "better" for the week: tackling with the head up. That's the whole system.

Fourth-grade classroom. The class hits its reading goal. Before dismissal, the teacher calls the four lines and the class answers. Tuesday's writing prompt: "Tell me about a time your good got better." The attribution page doubles as a media-literacy lesson: thousands of posters credit a saint who never said it.

Making it stick

• Explain it once, early in the season. Tell them good is the floor and the chant is a promise to keep going. Then never explain it again; let the ritual do the work.
• Let a kid lead it. After a few weeks, hand the call to a captain. Rotate it.
• Use it off the field. A good report card, a hard practice in the rain. Anything earned.
• Say the caveat. "Never let it rest" is about not coasting, not about never resting. Kids take rhymes literally.

Free downloads

Print them, tape them up, hand them out. No sign-up. Navy and orange, the words and nothing else, with a blank line for your team's name.

Locker-room poster
18 × 24 in · PDF Classroom / fridge printable
8.5 × 11 in · PDF Coach's card
How to run it, one page · PDF

These are free for teams, classrooms and families. They carry no team names, logos or league marks, and neither should anything you add to them. Digital quote cards for screens are on the quotes page.

For teachers

The chant is a ready-made growth-mindset lesson. Three ways to use it: as a Monday opener the class says back to you; as a writing prompt ("tell me about a time your good got better"); and as the frame for feedback, where every comment names one "good" and one "better." Tim Duncan's story, a kid in St. Croix whose mother taught him the rhyme and who repeated it to himself through a Hall of Fame career, is the example that lands with students (details and sources).

FAQ