The Turning Point for a “Yeller”
How to Handle a Player Who Won’t Pass
Q: I coach a Squirt team and have a player who won’t pass, no matter what. The other parents are getting very frustrated. What is the best way to handle this?
Work Smarter, Not Harder, on Your Backyard Drills
Wayne Gretzky once said that he spent all day playing on the pond or backyard rink when he was a kid. I read this when I was younger and decided I needed to do the same thing. But when your friends go home and you’re still tooling around only because that’s what Gretzky would do, you’re wasting your time.
Captain Selection Secrets
For those of you who never played sports, team captain is not just an honorary position for the cutest, most-popular guy or gal on team. (Or for the coach’s son or daughter.) The captain and alternate captains have an actual job, defined by USA Hockey as the players who “shall have the privilege of discussing with the Referee any questions relating to interpretation of rules that may arise during the progress of a game.” (See the complete captain section on page 11 of the 2009-11 Official Rules of Ice Hockey book.)
10 Values Coaches Can Teach + 4 to Avoid
Coaches are teachers and have a huge responsibility. They can imbue—or not imbue—values that go far beyond sport itself. What are the lessons of sport and life that parents want their young athletes to come away with? Think about the athletes we admire so much—the names Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Michael Jordan, Cammi Granato and Michelle Kwan, come to mind. What distinguishes these great athletes from so many others? Think of it! Throughout good times and bad they have always played their game with class.
The Three Most Important Coaching Roles Every Coach Should Master
Coaches can play many roles – including medic, psychologist, chauffeur and sometimes equipment manager to name a few. There are three key roles that define the philosophy, practice and impact of a coach. The coaches who confuse these roles can find themselves making serious mistakes. The coaches who manage these roles effectively are the ones who win and change lives.
The Top Two Traits of Excellent Coaches
From the dawn of youth sports, there has been debate over the qualifications an individual should have to coach a team. In a perfect world, a coach with intimate knowledge of a sport would be ideal, however, often this is not the case. The following article outlines the two most important traits a person should have when taking on a coaching role.
The Five “B’s” That Improve Post-Game Conversations
The intensity and emotion of a close competition can easily carry over into post-game discussions. It is often difficult for coaches to stop trying to manage the game after it is over. However, post-game conversations are not a part of the game. After all, nothing that is said after a game can affect its outcome. Conversations after a game have much more impact on the next practice or the next game. With that in mind, here are five suggestions for coaches for post-game conversations with players and parents:
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A Good Coach Believes in Fun at Every Level of Play
One of the key factors to keeping kids in youth sports is the element of fun in the activity. In this article, Executive Editor TK Stohlman and Jim Johnson, founder and director of flexxCoach, discuss how important it is for coaches to include fun in their teaching methods.
The Importance of Long Term Planning
The most common problem facing trainers and coaches today regarding developing young athletes over time is the ability to plan long-term. The personal training profession is typically based on a session-to-session consideration – clients pay per session and trainers create training programs one session at a time. The same is true in coaching sports – most coaches script out one practice plan at a time, rather than create a relative flow for an entire month or even season. The following article by Brian Grasso discusses the importance of planning for the long term.
