Dealing With the Emotional Hangover After Games
You tell your athletes, “Next play, short memory,” then lie awake replaying every timeout and substitution from three hours ago. Time to coach the coach: you.
Expectations Are Useless If You Don’t Enforce Them
Every coach has “program standards” on a slide somewhere. The real standard is whatever you allow your best player to get away with on a bad day.
Coaching the Kid, Not Just the Sport
It’s easy to say you care about the person, not just the performance. It’s trickier when you’re staring at practice plans, game film, scouting reports, parent emails, and the never-ending chaos of a season. But here’s the truth: your athletes will forget most of the drills you ran. What sticks are the moments where they felt seen.
Define Success Before the Scoreboard Does
If you don’t define success before the season starts, the scoreboard will happily do it for you. So will parents. So will social media. So will your own ego.
Parents Aren’t the Enemy (Unless You Train Them That Way)
Most “problem parents” are just scared parents with bad information and no clear lane. You can’t fix every sideline, but you can absolutely keep yours from turning into a war zone.
Confidence Is Contagious (Yours, Too)
Your athletes can feel it when you don’t trust yourself. It leaks out in how often you second-guess decisions, how quickly you panic when things go wrong, and how defensive you get when questioned.