Steve,
I love your columns. They make so much sense, and having two of three grown children who were athletes from a young age, went to college on athletic scholarships and are just great people, I get joy from reading about how to navigate talent from a young age.
Hopefully, you can address the damage a ‘not good’ coach can do to kids. Unfortunately, both of my children suffered through crappy coaches, but my husband and I were determined to keep our kids mentally strong and motivated. Blessed that both of them can now laugh about those past times. I believe parents are not sure how to deal with this issue, and there are so many variables: How to approach the coach? Is it better to find a new team? What about friends they’ve made and love to play with? I would love to read your thoughts.
Kind Regards,
Alida
You don’t often find a perfect fit. Take these steps to make the experience worthwhile.
Dear Alida,
A dissatisfying coach can consume a child (and his or her parents) for a season, and the effects of one can linger far longer. To all of the families out there who are experiencing one, know you are not alone.
This subject came up recently when I was interviewing Mark Thomas, the husband of Maryland women’s basketball coach Brenda Frese for a column about how he and his wife parent their teenage boys through sports.
‘It is way harder than people realize to find a great fit and great coaching situation for your kid,’ Thomas said.
‘Bad’ coaches come in many forms: From apathetic to ones who play favorites or are enabling of star players and neglectful toward weaker ones. I have seen many youth coaches who want to win at the cost of development of everyone on the team.
Some coaches, even at the youth level, are verbally abusive and act as bullies. A youth coach shouldn’t be insulting your child. If you are in such a situation, pull your kid off the team and report the coach to your league.
Most crummy youth coaches are that way for lesser offenses. Here’s how to identify them, approach them and handle the situation while maintaining perspective on it.
What can poor coaching do to your kid?
Trauma, neglect and abuse of the developing brain can cause anxiety and lead to acting out and violence as children grow into adolescence and adulthood, according to Dr. Bruce Perry, a psychiatrist and professor at Northwestern who has dedicated his work to children’s mental health and neuroscience.
J.P. Nerbun, an author and leadership coach who has extensively studied team culture, writes about the long-lasting traumatic effects from his fear-based high school coach of the Bob Knight mold.
‘During our time under his coaching, the true extent of our wounds remained largely concealed. It wasn’t until years later, long after our time under his influence had concluded, that the weight of the emotional scars began to manifest in painful and profound ways for many of us who had played under him,’ Nerbun writes in his book, ‘The Sports Parent Solution.’
‘To this day, these enduring wounds have shaped our self-perception, relationships, and default reactions to stress.’
The trauma even shaped Nerbun’s own approach when he began coaching high school kids himself.
‘Was I like my high school coach?’ Nerbun told USA TODAY Sports. ‘Absolutely not, not that bad, but how do you discipline? Well, you just yell at people, you make them run. We operate from this tool box that was passed onto us from our previous coaches and so, for me, it was oftentimes those threatening-type coaching behaviors.’
COACH STEVE: What young athletes can learn from the late Frank Howard – and not from Bob Knight
Hopefully, you won’t encounter an old-school coaching situation with your child. However, consider these scenarios that might be affecting you:
A kid who sees a coach favor other players over them may lose interest in a sport he or she might otherwise love. A player for a coach who emphasizes winning over development − and thus plays certain players a lot more than that player − might have a similar experience.A player on a stacked youth team that stresses winning over all else might have trouble handling failure (and mentally moving on from losses) when the stakes are higher in high school and college.A player who knows a coach will make the team run extra if its members don’t do exactly what he or she tells them might equate sports (or a particular sport) with punishment.
We know from studies that about 70% of kids stop playing organized sports before age 13, mainly because they’re not having fun anymore.
Before you get to the point of your child quitting a sport due to a coach, there are actions you can take.
Step 1: How to talk to the coach
Youth coaches can be a kid’s gateway to sports and hold the keys to his or her future in them. These coaches can also be inexperienced volunteers. They also are often the mom or dad of a player on the team who, whether he or she will admit it or not, has an agenda for their child at the expense of everyone else.
We all say we aren’t biased toward our kids, but we all are. In some cases, a coach may even be subconsciously favoring a kid or his or her friend.
Whatever it is the coach is doing that is affecting your child’s experience, though, you need to let them know about it. They may not even realize what they are doing.
More importantly, coaches need to be held accountable for their behavior, especially if it is being enabled by an organization, league or school.
Nerbun has found that even the worst coaches have good intentions of wanting to help kids in some capacity. His abusive high school coach, he says, had enough support in the community to help justify his style and status. Thus, he didn’t really think he was doing anything wrong.
You need to gently suggest otherwise to your offending coach.
Schedule a meeting or a call away from the field to express your feelings. Be firm but calm. Parents can sometimes veer out of control when it comes to their own children. The more composed you are, the more likely the coach is to take your concerns to heart.
If the coach doesn’t agree with you, he or she might at least consider what you say. I know when I was coaching my sons at the youth level, I took constructive criticism to heart.
Offer to work with the coach. Volunteer to help out as an assistant or to help run drills in practice. The coach is likely to push back at least a little, but he our she also might make some concessions.
Step 2: Take a group approach (if Step 1 doesn’t work)
‘In the Sports Parent Solution,’ Nerbun promotes an open partnership and communication between coaches and parents that can strengthen the long-term health of their bond. Nerbun found more open communication between coaches and parents leads to fewer parent meetings, and thus more autonomy for the coach.
If you have issues with your coach, others on your team likely do, too. In these situations, there is a tendency to complain to other parents about the issue instead of actually addressing the problem. What if you all went to the coach for a friendly, open discussion?
This method is especially important for a team that will be together for more than one season. You don’t want issues to linger. They will only fester with time.
If you are up front with the coach about your concerns, and the coach still doesn’t concede anything, you have solidarity with others. This way, if you need to change teams, you can try and do it en masse and keep some continuity for your child. A mass exodus will also send a strong message to the coach.
I don’t recommend leaving during the season unless it is a situation of abuse. Doing so will send a message to the players that it’s OK to give up on things. Think compromise. You might not get everything you want out of the coach, but you might create a situation that allows every kid on the team to have a good experience.
Maybe just a few slight adjustments from the coach, and a few more positive words, make all the difference.
Step 3: Keep everything in perspective
Thomas, the husband of Brenda Frese, suggests you only have a few truly special coaches over your athletic career.
‘My wife and I talk about it,’ he says. ‘When you think back on your school life, how many great teachers did you have over all those years? Probably a pretty short list, right? It’s the same thing with coaches.’
Your child is not going to like every teacher he or she has, just like you probably haven’t liked every boss you have had. Part of one’s athletic education is playing for a number of coaches, and adjusting to their styles, whether you like them or not.
Try focusing on something positive that coach does. Chris Petersen, the head football coach at Boise State and Washington for 14 seasons (2006-2019), offered examples of purposeful coaching for kids as a guest on The Audible podcast Dec. 14:
Are the kids trying as hard as they can?
Are they supporting teammates when they make mistakes?
Are they losing with honor and winning with humility?
Finally, think of your situation as an opportunity to work through a problem with your child.
When I initially read this question, my thoughts went to an abusive/fear-based type of coach. I reached out to Richard Weissbourd, a child and family psychologist on the faculty of Harvard’s Graduate School of education. I asked him about the short- and long-term effects of this type of coaching on a child.
Part of his response, I thought, covers how you can deal with any coaching situation you find is affecting your child in a negative way.
‘The kind of coach you describe can certainly be harmful to children emotionally and morally in many ways, but the nature and severity of the harm will depend on many factors, including whether a child has caring, stable and supportive relationships at home, whether the child feels dependent on the coach, whether teammates are supportive, and the nature of the abuse.
‘It’s important for parents to open lines of communication so that their children talk to them about their experiences.’
In other words, the best way to handle a “bad” coach? Support your child through the experience.
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for a high schooler and middle schooler. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.