A Coach's Diary

I was reading an article last night from WeAreTeachers.com that made the claim that we are pressuring our kids to read to much, too fast, and too soon, and it made me think about the youth sports world, my own family, and whether or not we put too much pressure on our kids athletically too fast and too soon. The article claims that reading has long been a privilege and a way to pass time and share culture, but it has recently become a forced method of information acquisition.  This made me think of a quote by Kobe Bryant where he said that "Sports used to be something that kids go out and do for fun. But now it’s become so regimented where parents start to inject their own experiences or past failures onto their children, and it just takes the fun out of it.” I have three young daughters who I am trying to teach to love sports, but it is a struggle for me to let go and let them own their experience.  I specifically struggle with how much should I teach and push them...

The reality is, everyone retires from sports, and most people do it without playing professionally and most don't get college scholarships. Knowing this, it is important to keep our athletic experience in perspective. Knowing that we all retire, what do you want to get out of sports? Knowing that we all retire, what do you want your athletes to get out of sports? When I was an athlete, I wanted to be a pro. I wanted to play basketball at North Carolina and then go to the NBA. I learned in high school that it would be hard enough to get a college scholarship to any school, and then in college, I realized that it would be even harder to play pro. But I got out of it what I wanted. I was able to travel around the country playing basketball, I met some great people, and I was able to get my school paid for in the process. I had a great experience that I look back on with pride and joy, I still love sports, and I still love them enough that I choose to share my love of sports with kids....

They might tell us that we weren't good enough, and they might beat us, but they won't say that they didn't 'feel us.' They will feel our fight. They will feel our hunger. They will feel our will to win. They will feel our grit, our determination, and our tenacity. If we make them feel all of that, we will win a lot more than we lose. Most importantly, if we make them feel all of that, we can leave every practice and every game proud of what we did. 1 - Did you work as hard as you could? 2 - What is one thing you were proud of today? 3 - What is one thing that you want to get better at for next time? 4 - How can I help?

The best coaches coach players, not Xs and Os. Don't be so focused on the plays that you ignore the quality of relationships with your athletes. The quality of the relationships that we have with our athletes is as important as anything we can do. They are more important than (almost) any play you can draw up or drill that you can teach. "Culture eats strategy for lunch." Positive relationships help even our best athletes reach their full potential under less stress because we, as humans, are hardwired for relationships and to connect with others. Some neuroscientists  even argue that our need to connect with others is even more basic than food and shelter and is the primary motivation of one’s behavior. At the core of positive relationships is trust. Caring is the way that we generate the trust that builds relationships (CRT and the Brain) . When we intentionally build trust and relationships,  our athletes will be more willing to put themselves ou...

We all have experiences where we get so triggered, so mad, that we blow up on everyone around us. Coaching is such an intense profession, and as much as we talk about relationships and growing people, it is highly driven by wins and losses. Coaching and communicating can lead to miscommunication and unintended conflict. We have this thing in our brains called the amygdala - our brain's guard dog - that stays alert and keeps us safe.  When that kid second-guesses us in the middle of a big timeout, or that athlete talks back in the middle of an important and intense defensive drill, or when that angry parent starts to storm across the court, coming to talk to you about what his daughter didn't play in the final few minutes of a big game, that triggers what many of us call  Fight, Flight or Freeze  mode. That feeling of the hairs rising on the back of your neck, or your body getting hot, or the sudden need to ball up your fist (or the sudden need to run to the locker ...

A big part of coaching is our ability to connect with our athletes and their families. A quote that will stick with me is, "He made me feel seen, heard, and cared for as a learner." As coaches, we can easily change that quote to say, " My coach made me feel seen, heard, and cared for as an athlete, and as a person ." We are wired for connection. We all have different reasons for why we started playing and why we have stayed around the game, but at the foundation of sports is the human need to connect. Our brain's two main goals are to stay safe and be happy. We internally protect our self-worth, our self-determination, our well-being, and our connection to the community. To get our athletes to perform at their best for themselves and for the team, we need our athletes to feel like they are valued members of the team, and we do that by minimizing threats and maximizing well-being. Sometimes, one of the biggest threats to our athletes can be ourselves. We have all...

One of the hardest parts of sports is handling losing streaks! It's so hard to quantify the effect that one basket, one goal, one score, and one point can have on the players, the coaches, and the whole team. We have had games where we played really solid and just didn't make enough shots and lost. We have played games where we played terrible and won. Usually, the locker room after wins and practice the day after wins are so much happier than after losses, no matter how we played. There is a quote that says, "Winning heals everything." No matter how much we tell ourselves that the process is what matters, and play the game - not the scoreboard, and other great quotes that focus on how we play and not the outcome, at the end of the day, winning sure does cure a lot. But sports are a lot about managing moments , and we have to be able to manage, learn from, move on from losses  Cole Anthony just got drafted by the Orlando Magic in the NBA. He went to North Carolina las...

UNC's legendary men's' basketball coach, Roy Williams, says that the toughest part of the transition from high school to college, and the toughest part of transitioning to the highest level in college is the level and consistency of your intensity and your ability to compete. I see this at all levels of athletics. Talent is the great separator, but we all know the quote, "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard." Even with elite youth athletes, what separates the elite from the really good is the consistency of intensity and competitive levels. The elite are big, strong, and fast, and they keep going. The elite makes second effort plays, and third effort and fourth effort. The elite outlast their opponents.  If you want to take your game to the next level tomorrow, compete longer and harder. Don't give up on the play after you get beat; get it back. And keep doing it over and over again. This will build your stamina, and it will increase your ...

A big part of coaching, and life, is managing moments. It is being present, appreciating and building on the good, and appropriately responding to the bad. Before every game, I tell my athletes that we are going to do some really good things, and we are good to do some bad things. When we do good, let's try to keep that going. When we do bad, let's already make a deal that we are going to move on from it together. It's all about managing those many different moments in the game.  In this video, JPatterson messed up during a recorded filming and Marty Smith just happened to pass by:  Marty shared some kind words that helped JPatterson manage the moment, and future tweets, JPatterson said that he nailed the next take. Know going in that there are going to be ups and downs. Manage the moments in the game. Manage the moments in life. Don't get too high on the highs, and down get too low on the lows.

Jamal Murray was a recent guest on the Knuckleheads podcast. They talked about his growth from a youth star in Canada, to Kentucky, to the NBA. QRich asked him how he kept his edge and kept working hard and stayed hungry to stay at the top of his class when a lot of you phenoms get complacent and fall off. Quentin Richardson: The guys are the best at a young age don't always finish that way. You were already one of the best players and one of the most skilled kids on the team in high school, so what made you keep working and keep feeling like you had to prove yourself? Jamal Murray: I put a lot of work into my craft. I'm not out here just trying to get better - I am trying to be the best player every time I step on the court. I put the work in, and coming from Canada, it was the guys in the states with the hype and the mixtapes, and I know I am better than this kid, I just know that he has the cameras and the support behind him. It is just a matter of me going out there and pro...

I was talking to a father of a youth soccer player. His son had just received his first mid-year evaluation. His son is 10 or 11 and a multi-sport athlete on a team where most other kids are full-time soccer players. Dad said that the coach killed his kid in the evaluation, and part of it had to do with the fact that his son split time with other sports. Player evaluations from coaches, even at this age, can be tough. A lot of the time, it's the first time someone outside of the home is critical of an athlete, and it can be tough for a kid, and parent, to hear. Dad's response to his son was spot-on. He told his athlete that he had two choices: he could either get his head down, pout, and feel sorry for himself, or he could learn from what the coach told him and use it to fuel him and get better. Hearing this reminded me of the quote, "Prepare your child instead of preparing the path for your child." Part of a coach's job is to tell you what you need to hear to get...

We often hear the quote, "The grass isn't always greener on the other side." I recently heard a coach add to the quote, "The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but the water bills are probably higher too." I have seen so many kids switch teams or transfer because they think another situation might be better for them.   Sometimes they are right and making that switch was the best move for them. I have seen athletes leave one environment for another and thrive. I have seen kids who were JV players struggling to stay on the team in high school transfer to a different school, blossom in the right environment with the right opportunities, and work themselves into becoming college athletes. Sometimes they were wrong, and the grass wasn't greener. They changed the situation but they didn't make the changes that they needed to make internally, so the same problems followed them. When there is a lack of character, toughness, work ethic, grit, an...

One of your most important 'abilities' is your ability to be coached. "How well can you take in, learn, and apply new information?" The better you are at that, the more skills that you can add to your game, the better the player you can be. Every practice we teach and learn. The goal is to learn it so well that the next practice, we can build on what we learned.  It's like climbing a ladder. We start at the bottom, and every time we learn something new, we take one step up the ladder. The only way we can move up is by learning, applying, and remembering that information. If we can't remember or apply it, we are stuck at the same level. Keep climbing the ladder of learning, and you will keep climbing the ladder of success. But it starts with listening, learning, and knowing that you don't know everything.

This is a mindset that I grew up on. When I was in middle school, I would have my parents drop me off at the rec or the park so that I could play against the high school kids and men. I have to admit that I used to be scared to get on the court, but I knew that playing against the older guys would help me get better. One thing that really helped me was that one of the older guys was a good friend of mine who encouraged me and gave me the confidence to get out there. He just told me that I could play with them, he kept pushing me to get out there, and he would pick me to play on his team. There were good days, bad days, and ugly days. On a Monday, I would have a great day of playing and feel like I made it, and then a couple of days later, I would get laughed out of the gym. There were so many ups and downs and emotions, but I just stuck with it. Over time, I became one of the older guys. It became 'my' gym. I became a leader. But I did it because I didn't stop. I didn't...

Growing up, we were taught to finish what you start. If you want to play this season, we aren't going to quit in the middle of it just because things aren't going our way. At the beginning of one season, I had a JV parent call me and tell me that she was going to pull her daughter from the team. She and her daughter were upset that she wasn't getting the in-game opportunities that they wanted, and it was affecting her life outside of basketball to the point where they felt it was best if they cut ties now. To her surprise, I told her that this might be the best move for everybody. What mom didn't see (or hear) was that her athlete wasn't giving any effort in practice and that she was telling her teammates that she didn't really like basketball and that she doesn't want to play. Mom was upset that I wasn't on board with making her stick it out, but this wasn't the right environment for her, and because she didn't want to be there, it hurt the team...

When I was growing up, there was a school down the street from my house, and I used to spend a lot of time on their basketball court. I was there on nights before big games. I was there during the summer mornings getting work in before most people woke up. I was there most summer nights. I was there when life just got hard, times were tough, and I need to get away. Now, I am there on Friday nights with my daughters and their teammates, pushing them a little harder than they probably want to be pushed, but trying to help them get ahead and stay ahead. Little reminders like this help me remember what these Friday nights are really about - falling in love with the game. The court has always been my safe space. Winning is fun. The games are great. But nothing is better than the sport itself. Nothing is better than having a ball and a hoop.

TEACH | CORRECT | HOLD ACCOUNTABLE | INSPIRE | RE-TEACH Kobe Bryant once said in an interview that if he has something in his nose, he wants to be around people who will tell him that he has something in his nose. He doesn't want to walk around all day with something wrong because people are afraid to tell him. If you want to be the best that you can be, you have to want people to tell you when something is wrong or when something can be done better. The best coaches and leaders have the gift of telling their athletes what is wrong in a way that inspires and empowers. They don't do it in a way the brings people down; they lift their people up. A big part of coaching is inspiring your athletes while building their confidence and skill. If you go around telling them how bad they are, that isn't going to inspire them nor give them the confidence to do anything. If you don't tell them what they are doing wrong, then they won't ever get better. As coaches and leaders, we...

Check on your people. We are in the middle of a pandemic, social and racial justice, and the election season that just won't stop. There are a lot of reasons for your people to be struggling mentally today. Check on them. Make sure that they are okay. Make sure that they know that you are here for them. Great leaders create great teams by making sure that everyone feels like that matter, on a great team, that does stuff that matters. Make sure that you are connecting with them in a way that they know they matter and what we are doing together matters. I played for a coach in college who had a great mindset on making where you are matter and meaningful. I asked him if his goals were to coach at a big-time college. His response was, "You have to make where you are big-time." Your role in your job is big-time. It matters. You matter. Your player's matter. Your team matters. Communicate with them in a way that they KNOW they matter. Make where you are at big-time.

Sherpas are a Nepalese ethnic group of about 150,000 people. They are known for their climbing skills, strength and endurance at high altitudes. Tenzing Norgay was one of the first of two men to climb Mount Everest in 1953. Many of them work as guides and porters who help clients climb to the top of Mount Everest and other Himalayan peaks. Their job is very dangerous. It has a 1.2% mortality rate. No other service industry in the world has a mortality rate that high. When one Sherpa was asked how many times he has climbed Mount Everest, he said that he couldn't remember - he only keeps count of the number of people that he helps get up and down the mountain safely. As a coach, one of our goals needs to be to bring as many people up the mountain as safely as possible. The success stories are great to celebrate, but the unsuccessful ones are the ones who haunt us. I remember being a young college coach and one of our athletes wouldn't run as hard as he could; so I made him run ag...

On a Facebook sports group page, a parent posted this: While I sit here this morning between four U11/U12 girls games I hear parents and coaches making comments like: "Jesus Christ! What are you doing?" "You're terrible!" "Wake up! You shouldn't even be out there if you are going to play like that!" "Why did we even drive here this morning!!!" "That (goal) was your fault!" This reminded me of a speech that I heard about the power of the words of sports' parents and coaches. What we say to our athletes now becomes their inner voice later. I am in no way a judge of what should and shouldn't be said to your athlete. Sometimes our athletes need to be pushed, and no one knows your athletes better than you do. I have said some of these things myself. Sometimes, one or two of the things is real feedback that accurately reflects performance. It is easy to judge a parent or a coach based on an overheard comment. Yesterday, I was...

I have a young daughter that plays soccer. She is pretty good (for a 5-year-old). She scores a lot of goals, and she stops a lot of goals (that is our team mantra - 'score goals, stop goals'). My fear for her as her coach-dad is that she has so much success now that she won't know how to handle adversity when it comes. I don't want her to fail - I want her to win every game that she ever plays! But, if she does happen to lose (we all lose), I want her to be able to handle it. Last night at soccer practice, she lost in a drill and she started crying. She was playing around and not focused when we were teaching how to do the drill, and it affected the way that she played. It was such a good learning lesson for her, and for me. I learned how she responds to adversity. She learned the importance of paying attention and doing your best. It was a small, teachable moment that hopefully will have a lasting impact. After practice, I said, "It's not fun losing, right?...

Thankful to Dayanara Gail Arandela for the inspiration. Coaching kids is one of the most fulfilling things that we can do. It can be hard, it can be challenging, but there is nothing like seeing kids grow and succeed because of the leadership and instruction that we are providing. I always say that if you have a good coach, be thankful. The true gems are few and far between. On the flip side, we coaches have to fully invest in the kids, and families, that we teach, coach, and lead. Our responsibility is to give them everything we can. It responsibility is to teach them how to be better players and better people. It is to love them, care about them, teach them, and help them grow. Coaches, when you get players who are bought in, who are respectful, who are tough, and who are coachable, be thankful. Thank them. Celebrate their character strengths. Help them grow their character weaknesses. Coaching and playing is a true partnership. We are in this together.

Every season as a high school coach, I had a very similar trajectory. I always started the season with the goal of building character first in my athletes, doing the right things, and coaching kids up on the court and off the court to be better athletes and better players. Then, we start to win and I feel the pressure to keep winning, and sometimes the character piece takes a back seat to the winning. Then I see a video like the one above and quotes like the one below and I get back on track and back to doing things the way that they should be done. We signup to coach. We want to teach our kids how to play, we want to compete, and we want to win through the process. But if we want to get the most out of the game, our players, and ourselves, we will use the sports that we coach to build character. There is a real, huge relationship between building character and performance. Building character is just like building muscles. When you work on it and put consistent demands on it, you build...

We play the game to play. As athletes, want to be out there, involved, and making plays that will help our team win. As parents, we want to see our kids out there, involved, and making plays that will help our team win while having fun and learning lessons that will help them now and later in life. As coaches, we (most of us) want all of our kids out there, involved, and making plays that will help our team win, while teaching life lessons that will help them now and later in life. When we first start playing on rec teams, everybody plays. It's all about fun and learning. Everybody plays an equal amount of time and hopefully get the same opportunities that everybody else gets. Then, we start playing on select and travel teams, and we start to see some separation. We start to notice that some kids are just a little better or more prepared than others. While we might still get to play at least half of the game, some kids get to play a little more. And some kids get the ball a little ...