Dealing With Failure

I once coached a kid who was a perfectionist. She was the prototypical oldest child. Type A personality, high achiever, and super competitive.

What made her so good was that she really, really wanted to do the best she could for herself and others. She wanted to compete, she was super coachable, and she wanted to please.

All of those characteristics also manifested itself in one negative way: she struggled mentally when she wasn't able to master something quickly.

It started out simple and harmless, but her inability to handle adversity began to get worse and worse. I started to notice that with every mistake, she would look immediately to me. Then she started to look at her parents after each mistake.

I set up a meeting with her parents to talk about this. My biggest goal for her was to learn how to play through mistakes and learn how to deal with adversity appropriately. This was a life skill that we needed her to learn. The last thing that we wanted was sports, and our role as parents and coaches in her sport's life, to create anxiety and mental health issues that would affect her later in life.

We wanted her to be a better person because she played sports, not hurt because of it.

We made a commitment to encourage her through the good and the bad. I made a commitment to continue to push her as her coach, to find the good in what she does but to teach and hold her accountable at all times so that she could reach her full potential.

Her parents made a commitment to be a source of inspiration, comfort, and a place of peace for her. The practice, the games, the competition, and everything that comes with being a high-level athlete is enough pressure; she didn't need the extra pressure of having to perform to receive her parents' approval. She just needed her parents' love and support.

In the end, I think things went well for her. She is playing college basketball, and her parents are very proud of her; as they should be.

Learning how to deal with failure is one of the best things that sports can teach.