At our first game, I went in with a plan that had worked with other teams. However, I quickly realized that this year’s players are different, requiring me to adjust my approach to match their unique personalities and talents instead of forcing them into my system. Can you discuss this humbling process, how to tap into creativity without overdoing it, and the mindset needed to continually refine strategies until they fit the team?

I began my coaching career in my teens and ended it in my sixties…at which point I found myself, for the first time in my life with time on my hands, whereupon I killed time for a few years by wearing out my joints (which I got rather good at).

But now, upon reaching the grand old age of eighty, and with some of my worn-out joints now replaced by metal ones, I’ve found a new occupation that’s more in line with my age. This new occupation involves sitting in my folding chair on the sidelines and watching my grandchildren get their own sports careers going.  

Well, this weekend my wife and I drove the 100 miles over the mountains to watch our seven year old grandson play his first soccer game of the season…but I ran into a problem.  The problem was that my old coaching urge hit me as soon as the game started, and I found myself, not “watching” my grandson play soccer, but coaching the game in my head – making adjustments, devising strategies, assessing strengths and weaknesses, and writing mental notes on what to work on at next week’s practices.  I mean, I couldn’t help myself.  

But thank god, I’m showing maturity. Rather than unloading my sideline coaching there from my folding chair, I kept my mouth closed until the long drive home, whereupon I shot down my wife’s efforts to nap in the passenger seat by running my coaching ideas by her non-stop.  Fortunately, she’s had many years of experience at handling me and has learned the trick of listening and sleeping at the same time.     

*****

But now it’s the morning after my grandson’s first soccer game of the season and I”m sitting at my computer with the assigned task of writing a few words of advice to coaches who are learning their trade, and I have a few things to say about what I saw yesterday that might be of help to you.

I’ll begin by saying that COACHING RAW BEGINNERS in youth sports programs of the sort that I saw yesterday is the HARDEST KIND OF COACHING ANY COACH WILL EVER FACE…for two reasons:

The first reason is because you’ll HAVE TOO DOGGONE MUCH TO TEACH!  I mean, the knowledge and skill levels of the little miniature people a coach will face will be stuck on zero, and before you can even begin your teaching, you’ll need to show them how to tie their shoes. 

 And the second reason is that if you are coaching raw beginners YOU AREN’T GOING TO HAVE ENOUGH PRACTICE TIME TO DO ALL THIS TEACHING!  The masochists who draw up the game schedules in these kids’ sports programs have the nasty habit of throwing the first game at you after about the third practice, and your chances of having your little pod of athlete-want-to-bes trained and ready will also be stuck on zero. 

So…how do you handle this impossible situation as a coach?.  

 Let me begin my answer to that question by explaining that there are actually two general types of kids’ sports programs that you might find yourself coaching in. The first is what we commonly call “CLUB SPORTS”.  In these, you, the coach, will likely recruit a collection of athletes of your own choosing, train them with no limits on practices and practice time, and you will be blessed by the fact that you won’t be required to throw them into competition until you deem them “ready”.  In other words, you won’t have a “time crunch”.  I, myself, spent most of my career coaching teams in club programs of this sort, and I gave myself weeks and months to teach skills, conditioning, strategies, work habits, attitudes, and on and on before throwing them into competition.  It was heavenly!   

The second type of sports programs are the SCHOOL AND RECREATIONAL PROGRAMS in which seasons are only three months long, practices and practice time is limited by league rules, and the people who make out the competitive schedules will throw the first contest at you right out of the gate.  It’s the toughest kind of coaching ever invented.  It was the sort of program I watched from my folding chair yesterday.  And, unfortunately, it’s programs of this sort in which new and untrained coaches are usually thrown.     

And the question I’m dealing with today is this: What can a beginning coach do to succeed in these situations?

*****

Here are my suggestions:

FIRST…keep your chin up and don’t lose sleep over the fact that your team looked clueless in their first game of the season.  Discouraged and discouraging coaches suck!  Consider your first game (and also the next several games) to be nothing more than glorified practices, and your task is to learn from them.  Then when it comes time to judge your success as a coach, do it not from the first game, but from the last game.  

SECOND…If you are coaching beginning athletes, build your teaching around SKILLS, SKILLS, AND SKILLS!  A coach who neglects skill-teaching in these situations to concentrate on conditioning, fancy offensive schemes, or anything else is  like a builder who nails together the walls and floors and roof of his house without first constructing a foundation!  Skills are the foundation of sports!

THIRD…Since there’s a good chance you won’t have ample time to do this skill teaching if you’re coaching in one of these school or recreational programs, sort through the skills of your sport, rank them, then concentrate your efforts on the most important foundational skills while leaving the fancy stuff for another year and another season!  This sort of prioritization might sound like a small thing, but it’s not.  I spent six or seven years in the early part of my career coaching beginning sixth grade athletes in school programs.  And the most valuable lesson I took from this experience is the importance of analyzing the skills of the sport you’ll be teaching, and deal with the most important ones FIRST!    

FOURTH…If it’s a team sport you’re coaching, understand that skills, alone, won’t be enough.  You must furnish your little team of beginners with some sort of simple offensive and defensive scheme that will allow them to unleash these skills in some organized manner.  This “organized manner” might be accomplished by assigning your students positions, or it might be nothing more than training them to spread out and move off the ball.  (I might add that in the soccer games I watched yesterday, the players on every single team sucked together into little globs around the ball that caused the skills of soccer to evaporate into non-existence.)  The first rule of thumb for most of these team sports is…SPREAD OUT!!!

AND FIFTH…(AND THIS IS REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT!).  As you plan your practices, figure out ways to WORK ON TWO AND THREE SKILLS SIMULTANEOUSLY!  This sublime coaching trick is especially important in these school and recreational programs where time is your enemy. When introducing skills and training your students to perform them correctly, you’ll need to concentrate their attention on single matters. But once you are past the initial teaching and you’re into the drill-and-practice phase, you need to get creative with your drills and design them for double and triple duty.  You see, all the coaches you are up against will face the same time limitations that you are…but the coach who can drill on two and three things simultaneously has essentially doubled or tripled his or her practice time!  REMEMBER THAT… AND DO IT!

BE CREATIVE!

*****

I’d like to end this little ramble with a quick word about the word I just used: “CREATIVE”.

Creativity is a sublime coaching tool!  Just because the rest of the coaching world is heading off in one direction doesn’t mean you have to follow in lock-step. Attend seminars, read books, watch films, investigate web sites like this one, and pick the minds of coaches any time you get a chance. But…always remember this: There are new ideas lurking inside your own head that can set you and your collection of athletes apart!  This is especially true in coaching beginners.  

A few years ago at the University of Oregon a creative coach named Chip Kelly turned the college football world on its head by creating a scheme for playing football games without huddling.  And many years before that, the track & field coach at Oregon State University, a man named Bernie Wagner, found himself with a new high jumping student named Dick Fosbury who had the bright idea of clearing the crossbar on his back rather than on his stomach.  Wagner opened his mind and worked with Fosbury to perfect his creative new jump, and he proceeded to not only win the Olympics, but to turn the high jumping world on its back! 

Creativity doesn’t have to be as earth-shaking as revolutionizing an entire sport.  Try simply explaining things in new and different ways.  Try new drills, new formations, and new approaches to old ideas.