Whiny coaches (or: a tragic tale of woe)

Boy, I’m not sure if it’s something in the air this spring – maybe the lack of spring – but I seem to be deluged with incessant whining of other coaches.

I’m coaching an extremely young, inexperienced, heterogeneous group of U12 boys. We’ll probably go 2-8, maybe 3-7. But I don’t go crying about it. They’ll learn. They’ll get better, and already have. It’s non-premier U12 soccer for crying out loud.

Yet it seems almost every other coach I come up against feels the need to serenade me with his unending tales of woe-is-me.

Last week, I called up an opposing coach to discuss a scheduling issue. He asked, “Are you going to obliterate us?” I said I had no idea but probably not since I was going to be missing my three best attacking players. He interrupted me to go into a 10 minute whine about how he was missing players and how the reschedule date we were considering was better because he wouldn’t be missing players but that date had the problem of giving him 3 games in 6 days and… well, I kind of tuned out after a while.

Then we got to the field and were chatting before the game and he started in his moaning again. Even after the game, he was whining about missing players. His team beat mine 4-1. If there’s anything more annoying than a coach making excuses, it’s a coach making excuses after he wins.

We met again earlier this week. I studiously tried to avoid him in pre-game. At one point, he found me and started sniveling again but the ref came by and saved me from saying what I was quite close to saying.

“Dear coach, I don’t give a crap about your excuses. I’m hear to work with my boys. It’s U12 soccer. GET OVER IT!”

What makes a great sports parent… and an awful one

Yahoo Sports had a great article entitled: What Makes A Nightmare Sports Parent — And What Makes A Great One. Surveyers asked hundreds of college athletes for their memories and what were their overwhelming responses?

Their best memory was of their parents simply saying, “I love to watch you play.”

Their worst: the ride home.

In other words, parents shouldn’t be sniping at or second-guessing or lecturing their son or daughter on the way home after a game. Give them time to decompress after a hard-fought contest. 

Nice compliment

“If you want to know how to play soccer, watch them.” -The opposing team’s coach to one of his players in the game today.

Best compliments

In my 12th year of coaching, I’ve received some compliments and some criticisms, like anyone else. Most of the compliments have been polite and pro forma. The ones from the kids are usually sincere. A few stand out in my memory, however.

 

A CLASS ABOVE

In one of the years I coached a middle school team, we played some amazing soccer. It wasn’t just talent or games won. It was how we played and how they interacted with each other. I was blessed with a great group of players. This is the year I learned that sometimes, good coaching is tweaking little things here and there but mostly staying out of the way. There was one incident that could’ve ruined with overcoaching but fortunately I addressed the issue while putting my ego aside. I had a great group like that. I had 22 players so I had a first XI (which played about 60% of the time) and a second XI… except just one keeper. The first XI averaged about 5.8 goals every 60 minutes. But the second XI was almost as impressive. They played the equivalent of about five full games; they conceded only a single, solitary goal… and that was a penalty in the last game of the season. So even the guys who weren’t good enough to start didn’t concede a goal in the run of play the whole season. After our last game of the season, I was shaking the refs’ hands and they said nice game. And then one of them said to me, “Your team (of 7th and 8th graders) could beat some of the JV teams (of 9th and 10th graders) in this area.” And this was said after the only game of the season we lost.

 

 DON’T LOOK AT THE SCOREBOARD

One year, I coached what was basically a U14 club team in a tough U16 second division. Due to the way things worked out, we had two older players, both decent but not special, which forced us to play up. Not only were we super young, but most of my kids were 8th graders from small rural schools  and they were playing against mostly 9th and 10th graders from big suburban schools with tons of soccer opportunities. It was a tough season; we went 1-9. Anyways, we were playing one of those suburban clubs and we lost 7-1. And as I was shaking the other coach’s hand, he said something that floored me. “You guys played better soccer than us.” And then I realized, he was right. They beat us because they were bigger and faster and bullied us on 50-50 balls and the like. We played nice, possession soccer. We just got beat because of ‘short-termism,’ the classic reliance of speed and physicality over technique and skill. In the long-term, Most of the games the games, we got our butts handed to us. And you know what, the kids got better. The next year, the same group of kids went undefeated and won the division. And now, four years later, most of those kids are going to be league all-stars with their school teams. We did play better soccer despite losing 1-7. It just took a while to show.

 

YOU’RE SO QUIET

I remember before I started coaching, I would be waiting for people to show up at the public park basketball courts so I’d periodically watch rec soccer games taking place at the adjacent field., usually involving kids 6 to 12 years old. I saw parent coaches screaming at these kids every single time they touched a ball. They meant well and weren’t berating them. They were trying to help. But they were doing more harm than good. They weren’t teaching the kids how to play soccer. They were teaching the kids how to follow orders… to say nothing of diminishing the experience. I mean, what kid is going to enjoy an experience where he’s being shouted at all the time. When I started coaching, I used these parents as my anti-model, as a template for what not to do when coaching youth soccer players. When I coached middle school teams, I would see the results of this soccer upbringing. I would get kids who would get the ball and not know what to do or they would make a move to beat a defender and then slow down like they didn’t know what to do next. And they didn’t. This is because for years, they’d had a voice yelling at them what to do. When I didn’t yell at them, they were lost. What’s worse is that some parents took this for apathy, rather than allowing them to learn. I had more than one parent imply that I wasn’t passionate. They thought I didn’t know what I was doing because I wasn’t telling them what to do all the time. In reality, that I knew what I was doing was precisely why I acted the way I did. Anyways, training the kids to think for themselves on the field and allowing them to make their own decisions and learn from their own mistakes has become a fundamental part of how I coach. So one day, I was coaching my U17 team. We were in the midst of a 12-0 season and playing some pretty amazing soccer. Along with the team listed in the last paragraph, it was probably the best team I ever coached. We were beating whomever like 5-0 in the second half. We didn’t have any subs so it was just me on the sideline. The coach of the U14 team playing the next game, not from our club, walked up to me and asked me how much time was left in the game, so he could figure out when to start his team in warm ups. I told him. Then he said to me that my team played really nice soccer. I said thanks. Then he told me, “You don’t say much when you’re coaching.” I smiled, since that was exactly what I tried to do and was glad I was apparently succeeding. Besides, we were winning big and playing well so what was there to say. I said something milquetoast like, “Well they work hard in training so I don’t have to say much during games.” I don’t think he got it. Later, I ended up being a volunteer flag man for that U14 game and was on the sideline with the teams. That coach was exactly like the parents I mentioned above: yelling at the kids every single time they touched the ball to do x or y. It was in stark contrast to the U14 coach from my club, who also didn’t yell to much and his team was playing some really awesome flowing soccer. At one injury pause, the other coach said something to me along the lines of, “I probably shouldn’t yell so much.” I nodded politely. Then his shouting resumed the instant the game resumed.

LOL and other advanced coaching tactics

I joke around a lot with my players. I know a lot of coaches think such a thing is ‘amateurish’ but I don’t. Here’s why.

I coach amateurs. These kids are not playing soccer for a paycheck. They are not playing soccer to keep a scholarship. Their motivation has to come from within. They have to enjoy what they’re doing. By making them smile, I help them keep their passion for the game, primarily by not suffocating it.

But it has another advantage. If the kids are laughing at what I say, it means they’re listening to me. And if I can get them to listen to me crack a joke, then I can get them to listen to me give them counsel about soccer.

And it works. Over 12 years, I have a consistent record of being able to motivate kids that their other coaches have not been able to reach. That’s the proof of the pudding as far as I’m concerned. Maybe this tack isn’t for everyone but it works for me.

And one thing I feel is important in being effective coach is quite simple. A lot of coaches treat their players like sporting robots. I treat them like human beings. I’ll ask them how school is going. I’ll ask them how a family member is doing if I know them. If they have to miss practice because of, say, a band concert, I’ll ask what instrument they play. This is how I reach players. I’m not all business every microsecond so when I am all business, I have the credibility and the trust to get my message to be received.

Passion

Some years ago, one of my 13 year olds rolled his ankle during a Monday practice. The next day, Steve* went to the doctor. His mom emailed telling me it wasn’t a big deal. I told her to hold him out of Wednesday’s practice and we’d see how he was doing for Thursday’s game.

On Thursday, I was standing on the sideline before all the kids had arrived just milling about. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Steve limping badly across the field. As he got closer to me, where he thought I might see him, he clearly tried very hard not to limp or at least make it look like he wasn’t limping. But it was clear to me he wasn’t close to 100 percent.

So he sat down near me and started putting his cleats on. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was getting ready for the game. I told him he wasn’t playing because he was still hurt. He swore up and down he was okay. I tried to reason with him: we have a big rivalry game on Saturday and I want you 100 percent for that. He kept trying to persuade me he was fine. Finally, I just told him sorry you’re not playing and that’s final.

He threw his cleats to the ground and started to walk away, facing away from everyone. Still, I could see tears running down his face.

I immediately had a different appreciation for Steve. I loved the fact that he cared so much about the sport that missing a single game in 8th grade against an undistinguished opponent made him cry. It’s that passion that made him such a special player.

Incidentally, because Steve was unavailable, I gave Dave* a chance to play forward; he’d been primarily a defensive midfielder. Dave was a nice kid who worked really hard and was very scrappy but his skills were so-so. 

In six years of playing school soccer, Dave did not score a single goal in any other game.

In this particular game, he scored a hat trick in 11 minutes against a team that had shut us out the previous time. Remarkable! But it’s a testament to taking your opportunity! 

*-Not their real names

Coaches playing favorites

This is from a post on a forum in which a player (not mine) asked about how to deal with coaches who play favorites. And yes, all coaches have favorites. But this is not always irrational, not always unfair.

***

OF COURSE, I have favorites.

I prefer the guys who work their butts off in training.

I prefer the guys who get results in games.

I prefer the guys who follow my instructions.

I prefer the guys who adapt to game conditions without me having to tell them every little thing.

I prefer the guys who treat their teammates the right way.

I prefer the guys who aren’t afraid to ask me what they can do to get better, because it shows drive and initiative.

I prefer the guys who held themselves accountable and their teammates as well.

I prefer guys who work to keep their starting positions or work to try and gain them, ahead of guys who think they are owed something simply because of who they are or whatever.

So yea, I have favorites. And most coaches do. But you know what, I’m also a player. And as a player, I have favorite teammates. I’ll bet you do too.

But it’s not like it’s some irrational thing where I throw darts at a board and love those random people or love whomever’s mommy and daddy sucks up to me the most. Get real.

Last year, I had a kid that had come to play a lot in the 2nd half of last year. But he got a little too comfortable and thought he was all that and wasn’t taking practice seriously. One day, he comes up to me and asks, “Coach, how can I be a starter?” I told him to quit goofing off in practice and focus. He did so I started him the next couple of games just because I was really just looking for him to show a little passion, like he actually gave a darn. Talent isn’t the only factor in coaches’ decision making.

It’s also important that you ask the coach in the right way.

DON’T say “How come I’m not playing as much as I used to?” It makes you sound pouty and entitled.

DO say, “What can I do to get more playing time?” It makes you sound motivated but not whiny or arrogant. Basically what you’re saying is “I respect your authority as coach. I just want you to respect my desire to play as much as possible.”

Also be careful of your tone. Sound like you’re honestly curious, not bitter or angry (even if you really are).

So quit your self-pity, take some initiative and ASK the coach. Any decent coach will have an answer to give you, even if it’s not one you like. Different coaches have different systems and place importance on different things. But at least you’ll then know instead of wild, ill-informed speculation.

If the coach won’t answer your question, THEN you’ll know he’s a crappy coach.