Respect Relationships

Coaches get the benefit of a presumed level of respect the first time they meet players and parents. Respect is the basis of any relationship, especially between players and coaches. Coaches that lose respect with their team, can’t influence behavior and effectiveness. Therefore, it is critical that coaches earn respect as soon as possible, but it is never too late.

Play My Kid is a resource to help coaches and parents team together to build strong kids. The key to forming that team is a relationship based on mutual respect. Coaches need to take the lead in creating and maintaining that relationship because it is their team.

Start with a Parent Meeting

Probably the easiest way to establish a foundation of respect is to host a parent meeting. The parent meeting provides a time to answer many questions for parents. Yet if you’re not sure what you’d discuss in a parent meeting, it can be an awkward conversation. Therefore, you can get a sample parent meeting agenda here. Just put your name and email below and click on “Send Agenda”. It will help you cover all the right topics whether you have 2o years or 2 days coaching experience.

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Coaching Values

When preparing for the parent meeting by reviewing the agenda, there are five core values coaches need to embed into everything you do. The following values are important to understand before the parent meeting because it underlies to purpose of the meeting:

• Connect – Respect can only be gained from people who know you. So, make sure you connect with every parent.
• Expectations – Set clear and fair expectations because players and parents want to follow your lead. Therefore, make sure they know where you’re going.
• Evaluate – Share your plan for evaluating player progress because players need to know how you perceive their progress. While it may be obvious to you, explicitly describing your process will make it clear and allow them to ask questions if it isn’t clear.
• Integrity – You demonstrate your integrity in even the smallest matters. Therefore, the level of respect to earn will correlate directly to the promises and commitments you make.
• Listen – Make sure parents know you are listening closely at all times. Most of all, they need to know you are open to their ideas and want to address their concerns throughout the season.

Next Steps

Coaches that are effective at building strong kids focus on their reputation by earning respect. Moreover, the five core values listed above should be incorporated into everything you do, and it all starts with the parent meeting. There is a series of posts coming to go deeper into each of these values.

We recommend a parent meeting at the beginning of the season because it is a great way to initiate your relationship with the team. However, you still need to incorporate your values into everything you do throughout the season. The Play My Kid Club is a growing resource for strategies and ideas that helps you gain respect as youth coach.

Everyone has seen parents yelling in the stands at players, officials and even coaches during grade school or high school sporting events. In fact, I’m sure you’re already thinking about the “crazy” parent that gets on your nerves. The parent who yells, “Catch the ball!” then throws their hands up as if someone just insulted their mother. While I certainly understand the underlying frustration, these fans are the reason youth sports are too intense.

Fans are why youth sports are too intense

First of all, let’s clarify the term “fan”. We like to think it is an endearing term that implies dedication, enjoyment, emotion and commitment to a player, team or cause. All very positive and supportive qualities. In fact, marketing is intended to create and convert people into fans to build loyalty. Therefore, we want fans for our kids, right? If fact, if we want to be good parents, we should be their biggest fans! I agree 100 %! Yet, how did the most enthusiastic fan become the “crazy” parent? Now its easier to see how youth sports are too intense.

Remember, that “fan” is really short for fanatic. If you lookup the definition of fanatic, you will find something like “excessive or unreasonable devotion or enthusiasm”. This gives me pause to reflect… Do I really want to be a fanatic for my kids? Will that serve them best?

Supporters

Parents focus on being supportive and encouraging. Especially when it comes to kids experiencing sports. Kids play sports because it’s fun, social, active and humans inherently love competition. Parents and coaches need to foster and support kids because it is a learning experience. Parents realize mistakes are going to happen as part of the learning process. Why would they expect anything different of kids in sports? Kids need to learn how to react to mistakes while having fun. They need support and coaching, not disappointed fanatics.

Kids need support and coaching, not disappointed fanatics.

Fans in Education

Lets compare the learning process in sports to the traditional academic learning process. Imagine a scenario where parents were allowed in school, as fans, to observe their child during class instruction. During the lesson, kids try to answer questions posed by the teacher. Would it be acceptable for parents to yell out the answer or directions? A  well informed fan would be quick to offer guidance out loud. Moreover, what would happen if a kid made a mistake or didn’t even answer an ‘easy question’? A fan might yell “awe come on! that was easy!” The most egregious offense happens when another kid is misbehaving or breaking a rule and the teacher didn’t address it? Again a fan would yell, “WOW! Are you blind?”

Although, this is not a perfect analogy, we hope you see it highlights why commonly accepted fan behavior is not appropriate in youth sports.  Just as the fan behavior is not appropriate in any other educational setting.

Proposed Causes

There may be better suited experts and research data which may explain the development of fan behavior in sports, but we suggest the following factors have impacted the parental fan based approach to youth sports:

• Competitive Sports Fallacy – The fallacy assumes that if competition is good, then kids need to play the best competition to be considered successful.
• Media Coverage of Amateur Sports – TV and radio have glorified amateur sports as entertainment, including the ranking of teams, ranking of players, arm chair analysis and side games of chance. Parents associate success in youth sports as a path into the college and pro sports covered by the media and the implicit success.
• Entertainment Marketing – brands for professional and college organizations, originally marketed as entertainment, has morphed passion in sports that inappropriately transfers to youth sports only because they are the same game.

Next Steps

Most parents would admit to falling into this fan trap. However, now that you can see why youth sports are too intense, you can help change the spirit of youth sports. You can make help by changing the behavior of fans to behave more like supporters instead of fanatics.

The change starts with your reaction as a coach. Mistakes and errors by players, officials and follow coaches need to be addressed like a professional, not a fanatic. This shift it will help the kids on your team know what success looks like. They will enjoy and grow in a healthy youth sports environment. Be the change.

Secondly, share this message with the parents on your team. Start at the beginning of the season and repeat as needed.

Finally, it is critical that you share this message with other adults involved in youth sports.

Share this post with your parents and ask them to share it with their friends using the links below.

 

Focus – Teaching New Skills

Coaches need to teach with focus. They need to model that behavior for parents to avoid overloading kids with too much information. Coaches and parents that are constantly feeding young players directions like, “faster”, “keep you eye on the ball” and “be ready”, all at the same time usually have an overall negative effect.

Coaches that do this during competition is one thing, but behavior like this is during practice is not productive. Trust me, I’ve learned the hard way. It doesn’t help because it doesn’t allow the kids to focus on improvement.

We are going to walk through the steps every coach should follow to teach new skills with focus.

From the first day of practice, coaches focus on classifying players based on their relative skill level. While that is a perfectly reasonable and effective first step, the real skill in coaching is how you respond to that evaluation.

Early in my coaching experience, I was eager to share all the techniques and skills I had learned over the years. I felt like I was going to burst at the seems with all the great knowledge. It was exactly what I thought I was missing when I was a kid.  I had so much to offer.

What I failed to realize is most young players are just trying to understand the game. They were not ready or even interested in all the insight I had. Many were overwhelmed by the situation. They were dealing with so many  other new experiences; new kids as teammates; other parents ‘cheering’ on those other kids; new coaches they didn’t know if they should trust; and other factors.

I quickly learned that kids don’t and can’t respond to overload. I needed to focus on one skill at a time. Therefore, I started at the beginning, focus on teaching the foundational skills first using the following process with each skill.

Step 1 – Baseline

Before the teaching began, it is effective if you use a common drill or game that can measure that skill. A simple example in basketball is shooting free throws.

Have each player shoot 10 free throws and record the score before you do any instruction to improve that skill. Coaches ,or players, should record how many  each player made. This will serve as a baseline for progress they will make eventually.

Step 2 – Teach Skills with Focus

Remember, kids are still learning the game. By virtue of their physical and mental maturity, they don’t know how little they know about swinging a bat, throwing a ball, shooting a basketball or even running. Moreover, we are all still learning about the biomechanics and performance. Therefore, you can’t teach a new skill by describing it in one long monologue, don’t try it. It won’t be effective because the kids get distracted  and stop listening.

Coaches need to show some patience. Dedicate time to teach one skill at a time. Allocate practice time to walk through the mechanics with enough detail for them to understand the purpose. It would be great if they could watch someone modeling the motion and understand what repeated success looks like.
Naturally, they still need to mimic the same motion, slower and more deliberately. Remind the kids, they are unlikely to have the same success initially. Your job as a youth coach is to make sure players are focused on earning success and not get discouraged.

Step 3 – Practice Skills

Once players have a reasonable understanding of the skill, they need repetitions. That is when coaches need to create the opportunity to repeat that skill as many times as possible but much closer to “real time”. The goal at this point is to provide more opportunities for trial and error. Players will learn how to adjust their positioning and adjust their movement, but you have to encourage that testing with focus on one skill.

Coaches only need to monitor, looking for success including correctness and alignment to the skill taught. When you see struggles or frustration, get them to think about how to fix it.

Again, you need to be clear to players, they will not dramatically improve in just five minutes of practice. We need to encourage hours of practice with focus.

Step 4 – Connect the Skills

The last step is the fun part. We need to put players in natural, game like, scenarios that allow them to connect the skill to the overall game. These opportunities should be just a natural part of the game. However, now you can alter the rules or scoring to highlight the successes in the skill you just taught.  For example, if you just practiced on passing in basketball, you can make perfect passes worth points when they are successful and are executed perfectly (or as close to ‘perfect’ you can expect).

Summary

In the same way, coaches need to provide focus when teaching skills. We, at Play My Kid, are not going to be able to give you everything to know about keeping parents happy and you should not be looking for a silver bullet.

Just like when you are teaching your players to be better players, it is your responsibility to make sure parents let their kids enjoy and learn how to play. Yes! I said, “let” their kids enjoy and learn how to play.

I know many coaches that see the success of other teams and immediately start the comparisons. What did that coach do but I didn’t? How can I do the same drills? How can I get the same level of player? Unfortunately, these are pitfalls for youth coaches that measure their value only by the result. The implication is that success can be repeated if you simply apply the same formula as if it is a recipe.

That thinking is an extension of the rampant commentary about professional sports. You can pick the team or sport, but at the highest levels of competition there are thousands of people who love to share their opinion about how their favorite team, “just needs” that last piece of the puzzle and they’ll have a chance.

Similarly, the US Olympic trials just finished and the level competition for each sport to select the best athletes in the country is just awesome. I can’t help but have tons of empathy for those who just missed the cut. I know each one of them has been committed and dedicated to their training for years. Yet, they will likely have to stay home and cheer, like most Americans.

Player Inspiration

On the other hand, while they didn’t make it this time, most will have other chances to compete. Some day, they will look back on the dedication and time spent training and ask, “Was it all worth it?”

I like to think that answer is a resounding “YES” because I assume any athlete is really only competing at that level when they love the sport. While the most talented and dedicated athletes will earn the most awards and attract the most attention, as they rightly should. I also believe you can’t achieve that level of success unless you love the sport.

That love of the game is something any athlete at any level can relate to. Many of us had moments watching the best professional or olympian perform at such a high level we were inspired.

I can remember being inspired by basketball players at all levels. I remember telling myself two thing as I watched, “That looks like fun!” and “I think I can do that someday!” Those moments were inspiring because I just knew it was possible with enough work.

I have to admit that some of the things that inspired me, I was never able to reproduce. However, there were many skills I improved well enough to enjoy playing the game. In retrospect, the lessons I learned along the way have shaped me as an adult.

Although, I was never fixated on being a championship at any level, but I was focused on being the best player I could be. That commitment, effort and self determination taught me many life lessons much bigger than basketball. It taught me lessons through both success and failure that has given me what I think is the right balance of confidence and humility in everything I do.

Coaching Inspiration

I think many coaches initially start coaching youth sports because they believe, “I can take what I experienced as player, apply the parts I enjoyed, and subtract the parts I hated and players will have an even better experience than I had.”

This is the mindset of most first time coaches, until they start to get competitive or see kids get discouraged from embarrassing losses. They quickly realize the diverse player talent, difficult player personalities and demanding parents make this a much more difficult task.

Now, they are faced with talented kids who want to “be challenged” and the parents who want to win more games. On the other end of the spectrum are the players who just want “more playing time”.

Parental Inspiration – Keep Kids Involved

The most important thing for any coach to keep in their mind is the original purpose for youth sports. Any youth sports program exists to serve kids not coaches or parents. Their purpose is to create the best experience for every player, not just the most talented. The program does not exist to serve the coach, build a resume or land a new job. It exists to serve the kids.

Any youth sports program exists to serve kids not coaches or parents.

Clearly parents really want to see their kids play and have fun. They want to see their kids embrace something they love and get opportunities to succeed. Parents want to keep kids involved. Its usually not about the scholarship or fame.

Parents want to keep kids involved. Its usually not about the scholarship or fame.

In most cases, they will be there to support the player and the coach that provided the opportunity because the coach is showing trust in the player and the coach is honoring the trust the parent placed with the coach to treat their child fairly.

These days, parents’ have heard enough stories about kids who, for various reasons, really cannot fully participate in sports or other activities. However, for those kids that don’t have such limitations, parents want to keep their kids active because some day they may not be able to play due to age, health or some other unforeseen reason.  I’m reminded of the adage, “Youth is wasted on the young.”