A Coach's Diary

College scholarships – and success in general in sports – can’t be the parent’s dream.  It HAS to be the kid’s dream. And the level of success or the level of college or professional that they are working for has to be the kid’s dream too. You can’t give a kid D1 dreams if they don’t have D1 talent, or D1 size, or D1 athleticism, or D1 work ethic or desire. They have to grind their own grind and dream their own dreams. Now, what we can do is instill in them the kind of character and the character traits that lead to success in any and all ventures in life.  The characteristics or hard work, persistence, grit, being humble, being a great teammate, toughness, finding their passion, putting in extra work to achieve goals, goal setting, etc, work for sports and they work for life. Instead of dreaming for your kid through sports, teach them through sports.  Teach them how to be a better person by teaching them the characteristics that it takes to ...

While they often get a bad 'rep,' and rightfully so, good trainers do a good job of pushing kids to work harder - often times more so than their school coach.  In talking with one trainer, he told me that us coaches just have to make sure that the kids know how much we believe in them and then they will give us all that they have. Kids have enough anxiety and pressure when it comes to performing in sports, and we coaches can sometimes add to that because we criticize - or coach - our kids, which includes correcting their mistakes.  If we spend more time on correcting than we do praising, it can be easy to see how kids might start to doubt themselves and our belief in their abilities. While corrective criticism, direction and honestly is absolutely necessary for growth in anything, and especially in sports, we have to make sure to couple that criticism with positive affirmation.  We have to make sure that our kids KNOW that we believe in their ability to succeed...

I think most people want to be good and try to work hard to accomplish their goals, and often when things don’t work out how we want, instead of blaming others or making excuses, we have to look at ourselves in the mirror and really decide if we are working as hard as we think – or as hard as we need to – to achieve our goals. Trey Burke, a point guard for the New York Knicks, recently had to look himself in the mirror and figure out what type of player he was going to be and how hard he was going to have to work to become that. Trey Burke was a star at the University of Michigan, helping lead them to the National Championship game.  He was then a lottery pick of the Minnesota Timberwolves and traded to the Utah Jazz.  After 3 years with the Jazz and 1 season with the Washington Wizards, Burke found himself out of the NBA and in the G-League.   It was there where Trey Burke said that he had to look himself in the mirror and he realized that he wasn't workin...