The Dream Has To Belong to The Kid

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 have success.  Those characteristics will last much longer than their athletic career.

Make Sure Players Know You Believe In Them

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 in the tasks and roles that we give them.

In the teaching and education world, we often say to give 2 put ups for each put down to counteract negative interactions.  One study, as reported by the Harvard business review, found that the most productive organizations give 5 positive comments to every 1 negative comment.

Coach tough, but love tougher and make sure that those you are leading KNOW and FEEL how much you care about them and believe in them.

Trey Burke on Creating and Routine and Working Daily for Your Dreams

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 working as hard as he thought he was or as hard as he needed, so he created a routine for every morning and every night, stuck to it, and it became brighter and brighter each day.  He went from on top of the world to out of the league very quickly, and he could have given up or made excuses, or even stayed where he was at in the G-League.  But, Burke knew what he wanted to do and who he wanted to be and he made a plan and worked his way back to where he wanted to be.

When you aren’t getting what you want out of sports, out of school or out of life, you have to take a different approach.  You have to determine what type of person you want to be.  You have to reflect on where you are and where you want to go, create a vision for yourself, establish a routine on how you plan to improve – EVERYDAY – and stick with it.  When you do see improvement, let it drive you to get more.  Don’t stop.  Keep going.

What is one area where you want more or think you can do better?

What is one thing that you can do every day to become the person that you want to become?