Coach Everyone

The summer before my freshman year of high school, I went to a basketball camp run by the recently-hired Head Coach. I loved basketball (you can read about why in an earlier blog, on the website), but after this camp, I made the decision not to play in the upcoming season. Why? Because the new coach was…not for me. RIP to Bob Knight, but this coach came from that same old school where berating equaled motivation and suffering equaled success. No thanks.

So instead, I joined the ski team. I had never ski raced before, but I loved the mountain and any time on skis was a good time. I made some friends - including one of my closest to this day - and over the 4 years of ski racing, I had a lot of fun and gained a decent foundation of skiing ability. I also learned the most important lesson I didn’t know I needed when it came to coaching youth sports.

There is a tendency among coaches to focus their efforts on the kids with more inherent skill or talent, or who are further along than others, the kids who came up playing club or are “naturals” or “gifted.” This is the “Varsity athletes” approach, and it is based on a) prioritizing winning over everything and b) the lazy assumption that it’s easier or more fun to teach advanced skills to athletes who already have a high-level foundation.

In the case of my high school skiing experience, the Varsity kids were the ones who’s families had been able to afford to put them in MARA, the local ski racing club team. These kids had been racing since they were very young, so of course they were better skiers and faster racers. It was my experience that our head coach put a lot into these kids and more or less ignored the rest of us.

I remember a day my Sophomore year when one of the club coaches - who would later be my boss when I started coaching - invited me to train slalom with his MARA group one random morning; I learned more about slalom skiing in that 2 hours than I did in 4 seasons with my high school coaches. And, he made me feel seen and valued. I’ll never forget it.

So, what’s the lesson? You have to coach everyone. It is unacceptable for a coach to give instruction and attention and a sense of importance to half the team. Coaching is not about satisfying your own need for competitive validation, it’s about creating a space of learning and growth for EVERY one of your athletes. It’s about building in EVERY one of your athletes self-determination - competence, autonomy, and a sense of belonging - which are the pillars of a healthy, positive, growth-oriented and developmentally-supportive athletic experience. It’s what keeps kids in physical activity, and is what coaches are supposed to create.

The thing I felt the most as a result of being coached on the Ashland High ski team was that I didn’t really matter. So, I didn’t put a ton into getting better; I didn’t begin to become the skier that I am today until I started my own coaching career.

The assistant coaches tried to include us, but the culture starts at the top, and I will never forget how my head coach made me feel. That memory and the resulting understanding became the foundation of my philosophy as a coach and has informed everything I’ve done in that role: No matter what, I coach everyone. Sports are not about winning at all costs or doing what’s easy or fun all the time; as a coach, sports are about creating an environment where kids can learn about themselves and have opportunities to express that knowledge through the joy of playing their sport.

I can say that I’m grateful for what I learned on the ski team, because it made me a better coach. Hopefully your players can learn it from the opposite side of the coin as you show them that they DO matter, by coaching each of them with the same intention, attention, enthusiasm, and love.