Both good coaches and bad coaches are typically measured by the games they win and lose. What separates a good coach from a great coach, however, is quite different.

In high school, I was fortunate to be coached by one of these great coaches, Dean Stark. Dean recently won his 600th game as the head coach for the Sacramento Waldorf Waves high school varsity basketball team. I’m not sure how many games he’s lost, but in the 2 seasons I played with him we lost a grand total of zero regular season games, and it seems every year his teams are either competing for or winning the league championship, so I wouldn’t be surprised if his win-loss percentage is in the .750 range. Those are Mike Krzyzewski numbers.

In a Facebook post after that 600th win, Dean thanked his players saying “To all of my players, past and present – winning 600 games is only accomplished in being around for a long time and having great young men to work with. I never could have accomplished this without your commitment, sacrifice, heart and skill. You all mean the world to me. Thank you.”

It’s one of the classic marks of a great leader, to give credit to the people he has led. And as much as I would love to believe that I’m part of some extra special group of people that made winning 600 games possible, it’s obvious what the real common denominator is here. In fact, it’s more likely that Dean took a bunch of ordinary individuals and helped them achieve extraordinary results.

What amazes me most is how the lessons he taught as a coach are lessons that transcend basketball; practice with a purpose, mentally prepare, work hard as a team not as individuals, do the little things well, set goals, it’s better to be great at a few things than mediocre at many, etc. These are the principles you hear in leadership, management, and self-improvement books all the time.

Hearing these principles by themselves, they are usually easy to understand, but often quite difficult to put into practice; simple to grasp, but hard to do. What Dean gives his players is the rare experience of living by these principles, as well as a chance to realize the inevitable, extraordinary results that follow.

This experience is more valuable to each player than simply winning or losing any set of games. It’s the kind of experience that sticks with you for life. You leave with an entire toolset of skills that you didn’t have when you started, and the universality of the lessons learned allow you to draw on them again and again, regardless of the challenge in front of you.

Measuring this kind of success goes way beyond wins and losses.  Not only has Dean changed the lives of the hundreds of players that he’s coached over the years, but those individuals have gone into the world and shared their learnings with thousands more.

600 wins is something to be extremely proud of. It is proof that if you live by the principles he teaches, success will take care of itself, and I congratulate Dean on hitting this milestone. I also hope that he knows his success is not measured in the games he’s won or lost, but in the lives he changed, and the impact on the world those people continue to have today. That is the true measure of a great coach.