COACH, Their Just Not that Into You

The hope embedded inside every new season is to demonstrate coaching ability well enough to receive the one reward, arguably, revered by all coaches: R-E-S-P-E-C-T from players, parents, and other parent-coaches. You try a multitude of things that you think will earn you that respect. But, what do you do, Mr. or Mrs. Volunteer Parent-Coach, when your players are just not that into you?

Your players are all good kids, but…  They lack the necessary drive, desire, and motivation to improve.  His poor attitude says, “I do what I want.”  It is too bad he doesn’t want to listen better; he would be much easier to coach.  She is fearful and timid and therefore difficult, at times, to coach.  Why isn’t their will to win higher?  Why are they so fidgety and so quickly unfocused?  It is the kids’ goofing around that makes it hard to get any good flow going in practice.  If only the 10 to15 good minutes of every practice could be harnessed for a whole practice, how good could they be?

While this may be true, you understand that nothing can be done about parents.  The time wasted worrying about parents is sometimes why players are just not that into you.  Your job is simple as a coach.  You must begin to understand every player on your team as an individual (not as an extension of their parents).  When you do, you can use players’ strengths and weaknesses to help them to work better collectively as a team. 

Befriending players is a set-up for coaching failure.  Befriending some players always means alienating others.  A coach’s winning instincts already will cause you to error attention more towards your team’s star players.  However, as the saying goes, “The whole is always stronger than the sum of its parts.”  Building rapport by building a collective team spirit is how you will earn all your players’ respect.  Work less on impressing a few and more on getting all players’ buy-in to the team concept.  If attitudes towards teamwork are a problem, sacrifice a practice and do teambuilding drills to work on them.          

Kids, as much as we try to think of them this way, are not little adults.  Sports offer them time to get together with friends, be active, and mostly have fun.  A personal agenda to prove yourself as a winning coach to parents at the kids’ expense will put you in the precarious position where players are just not that into you.  Build winning values verses focusing too much on winning as an outcome.  The intensity in your approach will be dramatically reduced, and players will more enjoy playing for a coach who teaches them how to win or lose with dignity. 

These are just some of the no-excuse truths to better youth coaching and understanding players who cannot verbalize why they are just not that into you.  R-E-S-P-E-C-T from players comes easiest when you take players’ needs into consideration first.  Each player’s needs are different and while it may, at first, seem daunting to build your coaching strategies around player needs; in the end you will not only have the respect of your players but that of parents and other parent-coaches.  See you in class!