We’re so often focused on the players in our sport, that it’s easy to forget it’s tough being a coach. The game has never been more competitive, the focus on results so intense or the responsibilities off the field so time consuming. Put together, it’s enough to make a coach burn out – or worse still – lose their love for the game. So what can be done? What can coaches do to lighten their load, ease the stress and get back to well, coaching?
The answer is surprisingly simple and comes in three easy steps:
1. Know Yourself
There’s a term in sports psychology: “over-confidence in self”. And every coach suffers from it from the local field to the Olympic games. It’s the idea that we can do it all if we have a little more time or give just a little more of ourselves. Impossible. Nobody can do everything, be everywhere and answer every athlete’s question both on and off the field.
In other words: cut yourself some slack. Coaches can feel a crushing responsibility for the team’s, the club’s, the school’s and the athletes’ success that it can be difficult to delegate any of kind of responsibility. But it has to be done. If you’re the kind of coach who can’t wait for 2:30pm to roll around and to get back on the practice field, then you need help with the other stuff: the administration, the paperwork, the counseling of athletes.
Empower your assistant coach or coaches to help with parts of that paperwork. If your athletes are coming to you off the field with questions about school selection, for instance, help them find other ways to get that support: friends, family, older athletes, the school guidance counselor or maybe even an outside consultant. Your job as a leader is to develop others. With this you will allow others to demonstrate leadership. You tell your athletes to focus. You should do the same – on the part of coaching that made you want to be a coach in the first place.
2. Motivate Players Internally
Ask yourself this question: what’s motivating each and every player on the team? Are they all there because they have a passion and drive to play well? Do they turn up to practice on time, work hard and play because they love to play? Or is there maybe a player or two more interested in advancing quickly and landing a spot with a prestigious school? It’s a critical but often un-noticed difference and can cause a lot of problems.
We call it internal and external motivation. Of course, it’s generalizing, but an externally motivated player may be on the team to build a resume for the right school team or for the notoriety, while the internally motivated athlete will play more for things such as personal reward, passion or enjoyment. As such, internally motivated players make better team players, cause fewer issues on the team and will ultimately be a better fit for the squad.
Take a long hard look at each of your players. Always play the kids who are punctual, passionate and play from inside. The athletes, team and your coaching staff will all benefit almost immediately.
3. Cut Players Loose On and Off the Field
There was a time when kids grew up playing soccer largely unsupervised on the local field and figured things out for themselves on the fly. Today parents or neighbors umpire those games and kids show up to club or high school teams instinctively looking to coaches to call every play or decision.
You may already be doing this, but go back to teaching real play not plays. Find ways on the field to give your athletes the tools and skills to play and then let them figure out, often under the pressure of play, what works best. It’s a short-term investment with big time gains. In the end you’ll have players who enjoy the game more and are much less easy to read to opposing teams.
Just as critically, off the field, encourage your athletes to think for themselves. Being an athlete in the first place is about making smart, correct choices under pressure. So when athletes are looking for help with school selections and applications, encourage them to think things through for themselves rather than getting fast, easy answers that in the end may not be entirely right for them. It’s not about choosing a school with a great name, it’s really about finding a school that fits with the athlete’s interests or needs. Ivy league, state schools and liberal arts colleges all offer great programs and perhaps soccer teams but they’re totally different. If your athletes can’t determine what matters most to them, if they’re having problems with telling schools apart or even don’t know where to start, then it’s worth them seeking professional help from a firm such as Scholarship for Athletes. Trained consultants, who are experienced former college coaches, can get that process started quickly and easily.
In the end, if you, the coach, think you can do everything: understand you can’t. However, if you motivate players the right way and teach them to think for themselves on and off the field, the game is going to change dramatically. And coaching too. Players will play from the heart on the field and use their head off it. And both of those things will make the coach’s job much less stressful and much more enjoyable.
Rick Aberman, PhD, is a sports psychotherapist with the Lennick Aberman Group. He has worked with many of the biggest teams and coaches in a wide variety of professional and college sports. His latest book is called “Why Good Coaches Quit!” Dr. Aberman is a special consultant to Scholarship for Athletes, the nation’s leading scholarship search consulting firm.