In the world of sports, athletes are celebrated, revered, and showcased as heroes who spend hours perfecting their trade.
What most fans don’t give much thought to, however, is the fact that coaches put in many more hours behind the scenes than seen on the field.
Coaches at any level of competition, be it Little League all the way to professional, endure challenges unique to the level. Little league coaches deal with young children who lack focus and discipline while coaches in professional leagues deal with millionaire hot-shots who don’t enjoy being told what to do. However, there is one age group that requires the most skill, attention, and patience to coach.
High school.
At a volatile stage in life, most high school athletes experience more hardships than their professional or younger counterparts with distractions such as mountains of homework from AP classes and continuously growing bodies and minds. High school athletes must weather this storm of negative outside influences while also focusing inward and improving themselves both on and off the field, court, or rink.
A vast majority of high-schoolers are like emotional volcanoes, primed to blow at any time. With this in mind, it requires extreme care by coaches of high school athletes to improve their players, while also preventing a Chernobyl-style meltdown from a disgruntled star who feels they are being criticized unfairly.
The first step in this incredibly delicate juggling act is earning the respect of players. Simply stepping in and forcing rules and expectations upon a new group of adolescents all at one time and then expecting them to take it well is like giving a five-year-old a graphing calculator and asking them to find the correlation of a scatter plot; just plain unrealistic.
In earning this respect, a good high school coach breaks down the Berlin Wall-style social barrier that is put up by most teenagers when coming into contact with authority figures. The removal of this barrier allows coaches to communicate with players, and therefore defuse explosive tempers long before they cause rebellious outbursts, or assist athletes who are enduring the difficult aspects of teenage life. However, coaches must remember to be friendly with their athletes, not friends.
“A good coach is someone who players are intimidated by,” said junior golfer Ryan Craig, “but at the same time someone who can be approached.”
Coaches of high school athletes should strike a balance and use an approach geared more towards teaching discipline. Establishing a fear of repercussions from infractions related to practice times, player conduct, and effort, or lack thereof, is infinitely better than establishing a fear of missed shots, hits, or putts.
Through setting firm expectations for player conduct as opposed to performance, highly impressionable young athletes learn life lessons, in addition to still developing a healthy respect for the power of their coach.
After laying a sturdy foundation of respect and trust with players, a coach can finally begin doing what their job entails: coaching. As the athletes being coached are still developing their skills in most cases, perfection cannot be expected. Instead, coaches should seek to push athletes to their limit of their present abilities while not going overboard.
“A,” said junior football player Justin Jones. “[Is] someone who pushes you to your limits and shows you that you can keep going through anything. They push [athletes], but also know limits.”
