Viking Coach

I wrote this back during the basketball season and I just happened upon it. . . Ya'll just sit back and enjoy this one, ya' hear!


“Oh coach. . . don’t yell at her.” I wonder how many times these words, or something to that affect, have been uttered, whispered or thought by parents as they have watched me interact with my players(their daughters) on the court.

Parents. . . believe it or not. . . these “intense situations”, that sometime occur between your daughter and I, can help your daughter develop an important personal attribute that will help her be a successful person in the future. That attribute is MENTAL TOUGHNESS.

In his book ”Raising an All-American”, Devin Durrant noted a business executive who stated that he is always looking to hire athletes because he knew athletes had been put in situations where they had been criticized and that they had developed the mental toughness to bounce back and continue to do their job. We are constantly inundated with the benefits of athletics in our lives. This is just another example of how something that is sometimes seen as a negative is part of an important life lesson.

Right now I am coaching a group of really nice girls. They are kind, caring and have done everything I have asked of them this year. I want to compliment the parents for doing a great job of raising their daughters. Over the course of the year I have come to the conclusion that the girls don’t quite know how to turn off the “nice” and turn on the “competitive”.

Being competitive and being mentally tough go hand-in-hand. You really can’t have one without the other. Devin Durrant calls it being “Rodeo Tough”. (Being intensely competitive by being mentally and physically strong.)

I want the girls I coach to be the best that they can be. To do this they must not only be taught the physical side of the sport but I feel it is just as important to teach them how successful people think. Everyone knows the importance of having a good attitude and we are constantly talking about being team players, making a commitment, giving 100%, etc, etc. . .

However, to keep that positive attitude, to stay focused on the team, to make a commitment to excellence. . . you have to have mental toughness. A big part of my job is putting players into situations where they have to work on their mental fortitude. I feel that the same holds true for me as a parent.

Maybe the importance of this aspect of sports is amplified by the fact that my father died when I was just seven years old and I have always wondered what I would have been like if I would have had a dad around to “toughen me up”.

I have always been a pretty competitive person but I really wasn’t a player my coaches would call mentally tough. I felt I had two major weaknesses as an athlete:

A) I was unable to control my emotions
B) I didn't know how to push myself to be my best.

These two weaknesses definitely limited my ability to be the best that I could have been and so it has motivated me to allow my boys to experience situations where they have and will gain mental toughness.

A lot of these situations have really boiled down to helping them deal with their frustrations.

Basically just showing them how anger can hurt them or help them. . . how getting frustrated and crying doesn’t help solve the problem and then giving them different ways to deal with the situation. . .or helping them understand that sometimes things just aren’t fair and you can let it break you or find away to succeed anyway.

Here is an example of this at work:

We often play different types of ball games in our yard. The games pit my bigger than average 13 year old against my smaller than average 10 year old. One of their favorite games is a baseball game I call “batter up”. One brother would go out into the field, my neighbor lady's back yard, while the other was the base runner. Who's ever at the plate will pretend to bat and I will throw the ball at all sorts of different trajectories and make the other brother run and try to catch the ball and get the three outs before the other would score too many runs.

Needless to say. . . the winner of the game was the son I chose to win.

Sometimes I would frustrate one on purpose by giving him much harder catches to catch just to see how he would handle the situation. Sometime one of them would get too angry and would do an “unsportsman” like action and I would add a run or two to their brothers total as a penalty. This would really get them mad, but they knew that if they continued they would lose the game or I would just call the game “finished” due to poor attitude.

Most of the time I did try to be as fair as possible and this was a fun night outside for the boys and I but there were games where tears flowed and lessons were taught. On these nights the purpose was to put them in situations where they would learn how to be “Rodeo Tough”.

Nobody likes to be scolded, yelled at or told they are not doing something right. That’s where the mental toughness side of the equation comes into play. A player needs to understand that the ultimate goal of the coach is to improve their performance. They need to be tough enough to cut through the delivery of the message and get down to the message itself. This will not only help them get better at their sport but will also help them handle the pressures that will come at them in life.

I told Casey when he was going into seventh grade that I thought it would be good for him and his buddies to get into sports and get pushed by a coach. Casey has come home a few times with his tail between his legs after a practice or a game but that’s when I step in and talk about what happened, why it happened and what the best response would be. I encourage all parents to do the same. Helping your child deal effectively with the challenges of sports is one of the best ways you can positively impact the team and more importantly how your child handles life’s frustrations as she gets older.