Home » MomsTeam | Team Moms/Coaches Channel » Coaching Center » Communicating with Athletes

Communicating with Athletes

Coaching Youth Sports: Getting To The Heart Of The Matter

The heart of every team and player experience is the coach. Coaches have a choice of going down one of two paths. One is a win-based approach. The other is often called developmental, but I prefer to call it "relationship- and experience-based coaching. "

Win-approach coaching is the most common by far (especially these days).  It involves short benches, and scheduling more and more games to build a winning record.  As a result, the dialogue between coach and players is one-sided and mostly counter-productive. It can result in brawls during the post-game handshake line, reckless play, lack of respect for the rules, opponents, officials, coaches and the game itself.

SmartTeams™ Talk: Joe Ehrman Urge Coaches To Reclaim Sport's Educational, Social, and Ethical Role In Society

In an inspiring and thought-provoking SmartTeams Talk, Coach for America founder and former NFL player, Joe Ehrmann, offers four specific ways coaches can use their unique position in a society in which sports is our "secular religion" to transform the lives of their players and reclaim sports' educational, social and ethical role.

SmartTeams™ Talk: Rosalind Wiseman Offers Parents and Coaches Ways To Use Sports To Teach Important Life Lessons

In an entertaining and informative SmartTeams Talk, best-selling author and parenting expert Rosalind Wiseman provides concrete advice to youth sports parents and coaches on how they can help nourish and maintain the relationship youth athletes have with adults.

The End of The Hockey Season Is Time to Reflect, Both for Coaches and Players

At the end of each season all players should take some time to review their performance and quality of experience playing the game. This process transcends the win loss record of the team and looks at individual development and overall quality of the experience. There are no so called “life lessons” on the score board and only through intentional review and discussions in the proper context can the real benefits of playing athletics be realized.

All top-level organizations have feedback mechanisms to help individuals develop. Without this type of communication and process between player and coach individual player development is likely to be slowed. This is very true in athletics as well as in the business world.

Teaching Life Lessons As a Coach: Be Careful What You Teach

There seems to be a phrase that every coach has embraced of late which I think needs a closer look, and it is "teaching life lessons." It's phrase you have probably heard a lot lately, so much so that it seems to have taken on a life of its own, particularly in the context of middle and high school sports.

"Teaching life lessons" seems to be a phrase that every coach has embraced of late, so much so that it seems to
have taken on a life of its own, particularly in the context of middle
and high school sports. But the life lessons a coach teaches can be negative or positive. It's up to the coach.

Private and Public School Sports: Same Problems With Coaches, But Handled Differently

The subject of which has better coaches: private or public school always seems to spark some petty good debate but my experience and insight into the differences between private and public school sports is a subject that I have spent some time studying for the last year, and I have made some really profound discoveries.

The most revealing discovery was the dynamics of the high school teams that I researched from both private and public schools all had one very common thread. They all have the same coaching issues, the same drama, the same politics, the same favoritism, the same  nepotism, and most critically, the same breakdown in coach/player relationships and lack of understanding. But they are all  dealt with in a very different way.

Public and private schools have the same coaching issues, the same drama, the same politics, the same
favoritism, the same  nepotism, and most critically, and the same breakdown
in coach/player relationships and lack of understanding, but tend to deal with these issues in a very different way.

Realizing A Child's Athletic Potential: How Parents and Coaches Can Help

 

One way parents and coaches can help a child realize their full athletic potential, says four-time Olympic medalist Angela Ruggiero, is to explain what they may be able to achieve by setting goals and working hard.

A Team With An Attitude: Mid-Season Evaluation Form Can Help

It seems that every time I have a conversation with a coach who complains that some of his players have bad attitudes, I quickly start getting a sense that the coach not only isn't doing anything to make things better, but may be contributing to the problem in the first place.  It is often easy for an outsider to spot the bad body language that infects so many player/coach relationships, but goes unchallenged and unaddressed because of the power that a coach has over playing time. If this doesn't make sense to you, start watching the coaches at games, and pay close attention to their body language and interaction with their players. See which team ends up winning. The coach who interacted with their athletes least, and displayed the better body language, probably came out on top.

One way to correct bad attitudes on a team is to give athletes and their parents a chance to express their concerns or air grievances anonymously during the season through a mid-season evaluation form.

Youth Sports Heroes of the Month: Jane Hoover (Elizabethtown, Pa.) and John Suren (Manassas, Va.)

Coaching today may create pressures and occasional frustrations, but earning the players' lasting respect pays a coach dividends for a job well done long after their memories of other heroes grow dim.
Syndicate content