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If players could coach their coaches...
©2006 oldschoolsportsparenting.com
Imagine a coaching clinic where the
presenters are kids. What advice would they give their coaches about
teaching, motivating and handling parental complaints?
Here are eight pieces of advice that I’m
sure would be on the list.
"If you’re gonna tear me down, make sure
you build me back up."
"If I think I’m better than my opponent,
I’ll often outperform him, even if the other kid is bigger, stronger, faster
or more talented. Yet you rarely seem to try improving my confidence. In
fact, you often do just the opposite. You criticize me to the point where I
underachieve. You think you’re employing the old tear ‘em down and
build ‘em back up again technique of player
development. Except you forget about the build ‘em back up
part, so you end up convincing me that I’m not very good and that I probably
never will be. Look, if I need to improve, the best way to start the process
is not by acting like I’m a total
bust. It’s by telling me what I’m already good at and by convincing me how
much better I’ll be if I keep working hard. There’s nothing wrong with
setting the bar high, as long as you make me feel like I’m already halfway
toward reaching it."
"I don’t mind getting yelled at. Just make
sure you teach me something, too."
"You guys get frustrated when we don’t
perform well. That’s OK. You’re only human. Besides, we’re resilient enough
to handle an occasional, ‘Come on, Jodi, that’s a lousy throw!’ or ‘Jack,
what in the world kind of shot was that?!’ But make no mistake: Your
expressions of anger serve no instructional purpose, whatsoever. Unless you
quickly follow up with an actual coaching point (‘Jodi, aim your feet toward
your target when you throw,’ or, ‘Jack, bring your shooting elbow into your
body when you take that shot’), you haven’t taught us anything. So if you
find yourself wondering why you’re doing all this yelling and seeing no
improvement, maybe it’s because we’re hearing all this yelling but getting
no instruction."
"Quit assuming that it takes a bunch of
yelling and screaming to prepare us for a game."
"It’s so stupid when coaches scream at a
quiet football team just before a game: ‘You guys don’t sound ready
to play!!!’ I’ve been on some of those
teams. And believe me, when a coach told me I wasn’t ready to play, his
prediction almost always came true. For heaven’s sake, we have enough
to think about, without you doing your level best to convince us we’re about
to get our butts kicked. If you’re lucky
enough to have some vocal leaders among your players or staff, fine. Let
them do their thing. And if you want to take it upon yourself to whip us
into a boisterous emotional frenzy, go for it. Otherwise, understand that
every team is different, and every game is different. Let us players prepare
in whatever way comes naturally to us at the time."
"OK, OK … we get it! Move on, please!"
"My parents call it, ‘Nagging.’ It’s when
one of them harps endlessly on a subject, long after they’ve made their point. If
you’ve been on the receiving end of a nag, you know how resentful it makes
you and how quickly you tune it out. Well, I react the same way, when a coach
thinks he has to repeat the same criticism over and over and over,
especially in front of the whole team. It aggravates me and embarrasses me,
and I usually forget what you were trying to teach me in the first place.
Granted, I don’t always respond the first time you try to correct what I’m
doing wrong. But that’s no reason to browbeat me. Make your point and move
on. If you have to repeat it later in the practice, or the next day, fine.
But leave some buffer time between your complaint sessions, so I can catch
my breath and digest what you’ve told me."
"Don’t gang up on me."
"I hate when one coach lays into me about a
mistake, and then just when I think I can catch my breath and move on,
another coach chimes in with the same criticism. Two people suffer when this
happens: me (for the reasons I just described above), and the coach who
first made the criticism (whose point I've now forgotten, because the second
coach just had to pile on). Once one of you to tells me what I did wrong, I
don’t need another coach to say the same thing."
"We learn mostly by doing, not by listening
to you talk."
"Once you get us out on the court or the
field or whatever, use the time to actually practice. If we spend more than
10% or 15% of a drill standing around listening to you talk, you’re wasting
our time and we’re learning nothing. Make your coaching points while we’re
practicing, instead of bringing the session to a grinding halt while you
pontificate. It’s called ‘coaching on the run.’ It keeps practice moving
along, and it prevents us all from getting bored."
"Throw away your book of cliches."
"There’s no I in Team. When the
going gets tough, the tough get going. They put their pants on one leg at a
time, just like we do. Your teammates are your brothers; play for them!
Yeah, yeah, yeah … we’ve heard all of
these. Coach, we're not nine years old, anymore. These kinds of sports
cliches serve no purpose except to make you sound insincere and out of
touch. If you can’t think up your own clever sayings, don’t use someone
else’s. It’s better to just speak from the heart. You might not sound
clever, but at least we’ll know it’s you that we’re listening to."
"Tell me why I’m not playing more, and what
I can do to get into the game."
"You act like my depth-chart status is
based on some magical, mystery formula that turns to dust if you release it
from its hermetically sealed container. It makes me resentful, angry, and
confused. And it causes team disunity. And, oh yeah, here’s a news flash: We
subs are not buying your speech about ‘everyone on this team contributes, no
matter how much they play.’ We never really feel part of the team’s wins and
losses unless we played meaningful minutes in the game. Rationalize all you
want; I’m telling you the truth. So if you really want backups like me to
stay motivated and productive, just tell me what I need to work on, and I’ll
work on it. Set goals for me the same way you do for the starters. At
practice, make an effort to watch and evaluate me, and don’t forget to
reward my progress. Who knows, you may need me, someday. And when that
day comes, I'll be more likely to respond if I remember that you were there
when I needed you."
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