Some of my posts are about building the culture of organizations and encouraging your associates to volunteer to help with minor sports. These are a few tips and lessons that people shared with me and I believe made a significant difference helping me to coach, and helping the players to learn and have fun.
- Learn their names the first time you meet your players, I coached many small children ages 5-10 and few things start to make connections better than making the effort to learn their names. I have seen some coaches actually tape their names on their helmets in hockey and that’s not enough.
- When coaching or talking to small children, kneel down and speak to them, make eye contact.
- I introduced myself as “Paul”, not “Mr. Wagenaar”. Some people disagreed with this approach saying that I wasn’t teaching them respect; I never found that to be the case, I was teaching them that I was approachable and I was looking for their respect.
- As the coach, always be the first person to a game or practice. You set the tone, you set the stage, and very often players and parents would start to come early too. Sometimes the quietest and hardest working players would be there the earliest and I was a chance to talk and connect.
- Make all your games and practices fun that is why the kids are there.
- Everyone gets the same amount of playing time, I coached house league players, and my passion was to teach them how to play and to make sure they had fun. I always measured my success by how many of the players signed up again the following year.
- Part of a coach’s job is to teach them how to play the game, fundamentals of personal skills but always how to be part of a team.
- My teams always took the ice or the field together. Goalie leads the way. At the end of the game, we shook hands together, goalie first, coach last.
- Teaching the players how to win is important, and how to win well is important. We tried never to run the scores up, if we were ahead, we insisted that the better players move to defense and we gave the other players more of a chance to play.
- Teaching the players how to lose is also important. I never worried about the score during the game, my focus was on making sure that each player and the team just plays the game to the best of their abilities. This approach did not change whether we were ahead or behind.
- Sportsmanship was the key; I taught my players to play hard and try their best but never to denigrate the other team or players.
- Usually, we had young officials for our games, it is important to encourage them and to realize that they are just kids too. Too many parents and some coaches lose site of that.
- As a coach, it can be tempting to play your best players all the time, I always partnered up stronger players with the weaker ones. My center might be more experienced and the wingers would be brand new players and even though they were only 7 or 8 years old, most times they learned to help develop the weaker players.
- We always had a goal for the season of making sure that every child scored at least one goal, it might not seem like much of a target; however, every kid wants to score and it doesn’t always happen.
- Practices were almost more important than the games, as a coach, tailor your drills to develop the overall skills of your players but work on the things that they are not good at. Try to develop your strongest players and your weakest players equally.
- Encourage parents to bring their children to every practice.
- Do the same drills you ask your players and do it with them.
- Always make sure that everyone gets the same playing time, but appreciate that you should teach them how to “change on the go” if they are tired.
- For many new players, they can get caught up in the game, remind everyone when the teams switch ends, which way they are going. I have seen many small kids score beautiful goals on the surprised goalie of their team because they forgot which way the play was going.
- For games like soccer, have the players that are not playing sit together, teach them they are a team, encourage them to encourage their teammates.
- Teach the players how to play every position; however, in a game situation try to have a plan and a strategy.
- Teach positional play and teamwork. In a practice situation, place two pylons in the corners of the net, not only do the players trying to score have to beat the goalie they have to hit a pylon to make it count. Teaching players early to keep their head up and aim to where the goalie is not sounds simple, but watch how many older kids and adults will shoot the puck or the ball right at the goalie.
- Prepare, whether a game or practice, have a plan on how you want things to go. Lineups should be balanced, flexible, and fair.
- Bad shifts will happen, mistakes are going to be made, and it’s all part of coaching.
- Care
Coaching is one of the best things you can do. I was very fortunate to be able to coach and benefit from some incredible kids and parents. I also really appreciated the time that other coaches and people took to teach me these lessons.