What's Ahead
Parents:
   To Be the Best at One Sport, Play    Several
Coaches:
   Building Team Chemistry
Players:
  I Don’t Understand or No Excuses

Maine Youth Sports
www.maineyouthsports.com
P.O. Box 442
Cumberland, ME 04021
inquiry@maineyouthsports.com
(207) 415-6321

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Supporting a Coach’s Discipline

Kids may get into trouble, from time to time, and a coach is going to take some form of corrective action. These actions can range from a discussion to a game suspension. There are four basic approaches that parents can take in response to a coach’s corrective measures. They are:

1. Ignore the Problem - If kids know that their parents saw the coach’s actions, they will expect to hear about it from their parents. To kids, ignoring the problem may seem like either parents are not interested or too embarrassed to discuss the matter.
2. Criticize the Coach - Whether a parent agrees with a coach’s actions or not, any criticism of the coach in front of a child will only undermine the coach’s ability to work with the child in the future and can even interfere with a kid’s ability to work with future coaches. If the coach is the problem, parents must find other ways to deal with the issue rather than discussing the matter with or in front of their child.
3. Double the Discipline - Some parents may feel the need to add their own corrective actions to a coach's in the form of a lecture or a grounding. This method does increase the consequences for a player's mistake. However, the surest way for a player to avoid this double penalty for future mistakes is to quit playing sports. In the majority of cases, a coach's discipline is sufficient.
4. Explain the Coach’s Actions - Sometimes kids know what they need to do differently and sometimes they can be confused by a coach’s comments. For example, a coach’s comment about a lack of “hustle” may be attributed to other factors (see Issue #6). Parents need to work with their child and coach, if necessary, to help their child understand the things that can be done differently.

Of the four approaches, the last is always preferable. Discussing matters calmly and in a positive way can help children learn to deal with issues by themselves. Coaches may not always be justified in their reaction to a problem. However, the way a parent handles these situations helps shape the way a child handles criticism. By directing a child towards working on things they control such as performance and attitude and away from things they cannot control, parents create kids who are better able to deal with criticism in all areas of life.

Resetting Expectations

Albert Einstein once described insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Different teams are motivated in different ways at different times. Sometimes, coaches find themselves using one approach with a team only to determine that another approach would raise a team to a higher level of performance. If only the players were involved, changing approaches would be relatively easy. However, in youth sports, coaches often forget that parents are watching and trying to participate as well.

Before changing approaches, coaches first need to consider communicating the new approach with parents to give them an opportunity to reset their expectations for practices, games and player-coach interactions. Without this prior communication, parents may become confused by what they see and parent confusion eventually leads to player confusion.

A proactive and communicative approach with parents is an essential first step before changing approaches with youth players. By working with parents in advance, coaches can get parents helping with the change rather than resisting it due to past expectations.

Applied Listening

From childhood through adulthood, everyone always seems to ask “Are you listening?” In life, as well as in sports, listening skills are at least as important, if not more so, as communicating skills. In sports, player listening starts with an attitude and ends with an action.

Before players can listen, they must be first be ready to listen. No player is good enough or smart enough to have it all figured out. If this were the case, then professional sports teams wouldn’t require coaches. Players must have an attitude that allows them to hear how to do things better or differently, no matter what level their skill or experience.

With a good attitude as a start, the next step is for players to listen and analyze comments. An instruction from a coach that a player hasn’t thought about is fairly easy to process. However, if a player is hearing something that the player thinks is already being done, it may be time for a talk with the coach. There may be a miscommunication between coach and player that requires more discussion.

With a good attitude and clear guidance, the last step in sports listening is doing. Putting into practice the things a player hears is the only way for coaches to determine if players listen and the message is understood.

Get the Most Out of your Crunches

The sit-up vs. crunch debate raged on for years, followed by a plethora of new ab products, all in an effort to get you a stronger, flatter stomach without putting pressure on your lower back. For now, it seems, the debate has reached an end with a nationwide consensus of trainers. A survey of over 3000 ACE-certified trainers* concluded that the best ab exercise is the Crunch on a Swiss Ball.

Position yourself on a Swiss Ball so it supports your back and with your feet on the floor. Curl up, hold, then return to starting position. This makes it very difficult to cheat and requires your core-stabilization muscles to contract. This means fewer reps than regular crunches can get you better results.

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