The Youth Sports Coaching Guide

By Doug MacGregor

The Youth Sports Coaching Guide contains the advice every coach wishes they had been given when they first started. Written by a father of four with coaching experience spanning three decades, the book reads like a down-to-earth conversation with someone who has been in the youth sports coaching trenches. The book covers every aspect of navigating the twenty-first century youth sports coaching arena. The book travels from the logistics of team selection and practice itineraries to the interpersonal complexities of working with players, parents, other coaches and officials. The book challenges coaches to look at their own motivations and relationships and to have awareness of their actions and words. The Youth Sports Coaching Guide is divided into six sections: • Coaching Essentials: Eight guiding principles every coach needs to know to lead a team with integrity, hard work and fun. • Building the Team: Strategies and tips for choosing assistants, drafting players, running tryouts, the hard decisions of selecting players and the tough discussions that follow. • Practices: Designing and running practices with an emphasis on how to teach and speak to children. • Parents: Communication advice from the mundane to the ultra-sensitive. Includes a special section for coaches for when youth sports goes off the rails of the Crazy Train. • Games: Real-life examples on how to prepare for games and to coach in the heat of the moment, win or lose. • Wrapping up the Season: Describes different ways to cap off the season on a positive and fun note. Whether you are a new coach or someone who has been at it for years, The Youth Sports Coaching Guide is sure to inspire and drive you to have a more positive experience coaching the kids.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646284450

Book preview

Preseason

Preseason: Youth Sports Coaching Essentials

These eight themes permeate everything that is written in this book. Rather than let these themes be implied, I thought it made sense to call them out. These are the critical messages of the book that are most important for present and future coaches.

Words Matter: Always Speak with Integrity

There is a reason Always Speak with Integrity is the first theme. The words you use with children, and the tone with which they are spoken, will have the greatest impact on the players of anything you do. That impact can be either positive or negative—it is up to you.

A person of integrity is honest and has strong moral principles. Words of integrity are truthful, clear, kind and laced with wisdom.

Too often coaches say things without thinking of the effect they will have on their players. The coach is unconscious. I have been tempted to record the words of some coaches so that they could hear how their harsh words sound. Sometimes you can see players actually wince when a coach speaks with belittling words or sarcastic tones.

The opportunity for coaches is to speak with positive words of encouragement that push their players to try harder and be better. With inspiring words, a coach can make a real difference in both a player’s performance and in their life.

A coach must be aware of their words when speaking to all participants in youth sports: opposing coaches and players, assistant coaches, parents and game officials. A coach’s words and actions set the example the entire team will follow.

As important as this is for coaches, it is not always easy to speak with integrity. There are frustrations, outright insubordination from players and terrible calls from officials. There are aggressive and irrational parents and other adults that will challenge you along the way.

The key is self-awareness. Regardless of the situation, coaches need to listen to themselves speak. They need to hear the tone of voice they are using. They need to acknowledge and change when their speech is not of the highest caliber.

This is most critical when speaking to your players.

The risk is that you scar a kid for years. I am serious about that—a coach’s words can do lasting damage. Words matter.

The flip side of that coin is that a coach’s words can motivate and be remembered and cherished for a lifetime. Words matter.

It’s up to you. Strive to be the coach who inspires. You won’t hit the mark every time, but you can try your best.

Coaching = Teaching = Leading

It took me a few years into coaching to really connect the dots that coaches and teachers do a lot of the same things. The disconnect started for me as a kid—my coaches and my teachers seemed nothing alike to me!

But after a few years of coaching, it was clear that one of my biggest roles, if not the biggest role as a coach, was as a teacher to my players.

Chances are, you are not a teacher in your profession. You might not believe you have the qualities of a teacher, especially if you compare yourself with some of the teachers you had in school. But to be a good coach, you must be a good teacher.

Your players are kids. Their life experience and time in the game is somewhere between zero and a fraction of yours. You are the wise, older voice tasked with increasing their knowledge and improving their ability to play the game. You are their leader.

Here are some qualities of both teaching and leading that apply to coaching:

The ability to communicate clearly

Patience

Mastery of material to be taught

Good organization

The ability to develop relationships with students/players

Throughout the book, these skills will come up again and again as it applies to practices and games. These may or may not be your personal strengths, but they are qualities that you should nurture and develop to become a better coach, teacher and leader.

What I have described applies to explicit instruction to kids. But you will also teach the kids—and, by extension, their parents and your assistant coaches—with the examples of your words and actions. All players and observers will be watching:

How you handle failure

How you deal with success

How you treat other people

Like it or not, as the coach, you are the undisputed leader of the team. How you speak and act will be lessons to the kids and their parents just as much as the actual words you use.

You might think it’s no big deal that you are just coaching a bunch of kids. But with coaching comes the responsibilities of both a teacher and a leader. Take the opportunity to do the best job you can. Do it not for yourself but for the kids following you.

The Importance of Goals, Preparation and Intentions

Goals

A goal is something we strive to achieve in the future, but ultimately may not reach. It is important for coaches to establish team goals which serve as points of motivation throughout the course of a season.

The team goals a coach sets might be to qualify for the playoffs, win a championship or to place in a tournament. A goal might be to simply be competitive in the league.

A goal for every youth sports team should be to always do your best and have fun.

Goals are the compass that help steer the team ship through the course of the season. We may or may not get there, but we strive toward them.

Preparation

A person can’t just show up to a practice or a game and be a great coach. They might pull off being a decent coach, but never a great one. To be a great coach, you must prepare. A coach’s preparation takes many forms.

Great coaches are organized. They take the time to define the skills they will teach and develop with their players during the course of the season. Once that is done, they figure out how to teach these skills. For the skills and techniques on which the coach is not as strong, they take the time to improve by reading, watching videos and talking to other coaches.

Great coaches prepare plans for each practice where time is maximized, assistants are utilized, the kids keep moving and the previously defined skills are developed.

Before games, preparation is setting the lineups and substitutions. Preparation is having contingency plans for multiple scenarios that could arise during the game. Preparation is having strategies to have your team play its best game while adhering to any mandated playing time stipulations or other rules.

Intentions

Whereas a goal focuses on the future, intentions are in the present moment. Through our intentions, we walk the path that may lead to our goals. We set our minds on the task at hand. By taking time to set intentions, we don’t live by default. We speak and act according to how we want to be right now.

It is important to set intentions before practices and games. Coming from work, a family barbecue, or first thing in the morning, coaches should take a minute to clear their minds and focus their intention on that particular event with the team. This clarity sets the particular task at hand up for success.

Intentions and goals can be the same. An intention that works at all times, for practices and games, is for the players to do the best they can do and to have fun.

That same intention works for coaches who strive to be motivate and teach the kids as best they can. It is important for coaches to make sure their intentions are in the best interest of the entire team.

A coach should do an internal check to make sure their intentions don’t only serve their own ego, such as striving to win above all else to prove they are a good coach. A coach’s intentions should not favor their child or a few kids over the rest of the players on the team.

The performance of the team is reliant on the preparation, intentions and goals of the coach.

Awareness and Humility: Know Your Strength and Weaknesses

He who knows most, knows best how little he knows.

—Thomas Jefferson

True wisdom is knowing what you don’t know.

—Confucius

If people who need to hear the know what you don’t know message won’t listen to me, maybe they will heed the words of these two great men.

In coaching and sports, as in any of life’s endeavors, no one knows it all. There are always things to be learned.

When I first started coaching baseball, there were older coaches who had been doing it for years. They had multiple older children, and I was lucky enough to cross paths with them as they were headed out the door. I took the opportunity to talk to them and listen to what they had to say. I learned a lot from these coaches, sometimes from conversations that did not last more than a few minutes.

I did not agree with everything they said or did, but I took a little from here and a little from there. I incorporated their prior experiences into my own coaching style.

I have learned that not every coach takes this approach. I have seen new coaches with very little experience honestly believe they already know it all. They believe there is nothing to be learned from those who have come before.

For these coaches, it as if admitting that they don’t know something is a sign of weakness. In fact, the awareness that you don’t know everything is the opposite of weakness. It is an indication of strength and wisdom that will set you on the path of educating yourself to become a better coach.

Perhaps it is humbling to admit you don’t know something. Perhaps this admission invokes fear that I’ll look stupid by revealing they don’t know this or that. But what is really stupid is letting pride and ignorance prevent you from learning and becoming the best coach you can be.

It is okay to not know it all. No one does. Once you get over that hurdle, then you can look at yourself to see the areas where you are strong as a coach and the areas where you might need help. Coaches need self-awareness.

Ultimately, players and a team suffer when a coach cannot see themselves and their strengths and weaknesses with clarity. When a coach stops to look in the mirror, they grow and improve as a coach, as will their team and players under their leadership.

Before and multiple times during the season, pause for a few minutes and do some honest self-analysis. Understand that you don’t know it all. See your strengths and weaknesses and be open to personal growth. This introspection will make you stronger person and a better coach for your kids.

Expect Maximum Effort, Not Max Results

There are a few sections in the book on this topic. It is critical for coaches to understand the distinction between effort and results.

There might be games your team wins against an inferior team without trying very hard. While it is nice to win, the lessons we want kids to learn from youth sports derive from needing to put in their full effort. This is why playing a better team always raises a team’s level of play. Only by trying their absolute hardest does a player or team reach its full potential.

It cannot be overstated that this is one of the reasons we have our kids play sports: we want them to work hard with other people at something that is very difficult. Coaches should demand maximum effort from players.

But maximum effort does not guarantee winning the game or the tournament. Maximum effort does not guarantee even mediocre execution. Kids may try their hardest, and relative to a coach’s expectations, the results might be sloppy, ugly and chaotic. They are kids, and as it is with adults, the results are never certain.

Coaches need to understand that players won’t be perfect, no matter how hard they try. Coaches cannot expect their teams to win every game or even play well depending on the skill level of the team. Coaches need to accept that if players gave everything they had, there can be victory in defeat.

Getting kids to give everything they have is one of a coach’s primary jobs. Perhaps it is the most important job. A coach who encourages and pushes their players to try their hardest and then accepts the outcome whether success or failure, a win or a loss, is a coach for which we want our kids to play.

Always Put Family First

When I first joined the board of our town’s baseball organization, the senior board member who had served twenty or so years said that he had seen our town’s baseball ruin marriages. A few of us laughed as if he were joking. Yeah right, I muttered. How could something as trivial as youth baseball come between a husband and wife and split a family?

As I approach my third decade as an adult in youth sports, I know he was right. I have seen it happen before my very eyes. Intense involvement in youth sports can be detrimental to your family’s health.

For those of you coaching four-year-old soccer in your town on Saturday mornings, I think the threat is low.

But add a few years to those kids and put them on more competitive teams, and parents will find there is always another game, another practice and another season. This is especially the case in the twenty-first century, when the intensity of youth sports has grown exponentially from when most of the adults reading this were kids. Back in the twentieth century, most parents never considered paying their hard-earned pay for kids’ sports. And even if they wanted to, there were hardly any kids’ sports organizations beyond town leagues.

The parents of my youth just didn’t care as much as parents do now. Kids in turn had way less time than our kids do on the ice, court or field.

So as an involved parent, be careful you don’t get sucked in too deep.

The demands of a team’s travel schedule can make it seem like it’s been weeks since you were all together as a family. If you join the board or are a part of the league administration, congratulations on your new part-time job. Just know that all those volunteer hours you put into it are hours you are not spending on your career or with your spouse and kids.

Remember that if you are coaching kid number 1, you also need to make time for kid number 2 (and kids 3 and 4 if you are like me).

Parents already know that having kids changes the relationship with your spouse. Parents are reborn into new people from the young star-crossed lovers who once fell in love. While not every marriage survives that change in the long run, youth sports can inflict further damage and widen the chasm.

Heed my words that coaching youth sports can be a real threat to relationships. Every now and then take a step back and ask yourself, What is more important, this game or the people I love most in my life?

If you really think about it, there’s only one answer.

Going off the Rails of the Crazy Train

The youth sports crazy train can barrel down on you on tracks from all directions. If you are not careful, you might get hit. And even if you are careful, you might get hit anyway.

I have been blessed to have had very little turmoil in my home or work life. This relative serenity makes my years of conflicts in youth sports stand out in such sharp contrast.

You might be chuckling to yourself right now and asking, They’re just kids—what’s there to argue about?

In my youth sports experiences, there have been rules disagreements before, during and after games. For some selective teams, I became enemy number 1 for the parents of children I did not choose for the team. I’ve had playing time disagreements with parents before, after and during games.

If you coach long enough, you are going to have conflicts with the other adults in the organization.

Most of these small issues come and go. But some take on a life of their own, perhaps fueled by rumors that spread like wildfire across the league. Sometimes conflicts become big, ugly and disruptive. I’ve had quite a few sleepless nights because of youth sports.

This is the Crazy Train. It might be crazy because it’s unjustified, ridiculous, or just a major headache in a coach’s life. Or it’s crazy because the disputes are over a simple kids game—seemingly not worth a major disruption in a coach’s life.

It is best to avoid the train, and a lot of the advice in this book is designed to help coaches avoid making minor conflicts larger.

Advice for Avoiding Conflicts

Put the players and the team first

Stay away from known troublemakers

Don’t engage in gossip or speak ill of others

Don’t put anything negative about a child in a text or email

Don’t feel the need to convince everyone you are right

Don’t expect everyone to like you

When coaches take a hit and feel the heat, what matters most is how they respond.

Advice for Responses

Control knee-jerk reactions to the situation. Take a breath and prepare a response.

Look inward to see if perhaps you did something to cause the issue. Having the courage to own up to mistakes is a great way to mitigate an issue.

Know that communication is always the first step to solve problems. Don’t hide behind emails and texts. Get out there and face the people with whom you have conflicts.

Frustration can lead to attempts to prove to everyone you are right. But there are some arguments you just can’t win, some issues you just can’t talk your way out of.

Don’t feed other people’s negativity with any of your own. It will just make the situation worse.

Stay positive, and if your antagonist doesn’t change their tune, it’s best to keep your interactions at a minimum. Surface-level pleasantries will do or perhaps outright avoidance.

Don’t let the trouble compromise your integrity. Sometimes you have to ride out the storm, and doing nothing is better than saying things or taking actions that you might later regret.

Perhaps the biggest lesson I have learned from the crazy train is to not to take it personally. Sometimes the issues are your assailant’s issues, not yours. If that is the case, don’t own their problems, despite the fact they have tried to make them your problem.

The youth sports Crazy Train comes in all different forms. Try to stay off the tracks if you can. If not, respond with self-control and integrity.

For the Love of the Game

The world has a lot going on right now. As it is for adults at times, I am sure it is confusing and scary for children.

For some kids, their home life is difficult too. Whether it’s divorce, illness, substance abuse, or financial troubles, family life in the United States these days can be a very rocky road.

A youth sports team provides an opportunity to be a sea of tranquility for some kids. It can be a safe place where for a little while, the troubles of the outside world go away.

It can be that way for the coaches too. For adults, the weight of the world can bear down on us from many directions. Coaching a team can bring about a youthful enthusiasm for life that can be a port in the storm.

The tone of the team starts with the coach. Whatever your prior experiences with the sport, use your love of the game in your coaching. Bring joy and enthusiasm to your time with the team. Let that be the tone with which all players and coaches participate.

Part of the fun in games and sports is the joy of competition. In competitions, sometimes you lose. That doesn’t mean there cannot be fun.

Coaches suck the fun out of a team by taking everything about the team too seriously. Don’t be so hard on the kids that they become miserable and begin to fear failure. Or even worse, they could begin to fear you!

Coaches can have high expectations, but whatever you do, don’t take the joy out of your team. Use your own love of the sport and inject it into your team.

Smile with the kids. Laugh with your players. Find the silver lining when things aren’t going well. Find the little things that can bring a smile to you and the players’ faces. Here is a coaching formula to remember:

Smiles and Laughter = Fun = Love

Some of your players will already have a love for the sport, but others will not. You can grow their love by being positive and energetic with your players. Once a kid’s passion for a sport is awakened, they may have found a lifelong pursuit.

Sometimes coaches lean more toward fear-based coaching over love-based coaching. You don’t want to be that coach. You want to be the coach who inspires laughter and fun. You want to be the coach whose players can’t wait to go to the next practice.

Love for the game can propel a team to new heights. But even if you fall short of your goals, the kids will be far better off having played on a team that was filled with smiles and laughter and infused with fun and love.

First Quarter

First Quarter: Building Your Team

There are many ways youth sports teams are assembled. There are drafts or tryouts. Coaches might get together to distribute players as evenly as possible. Or a coach might just have the team handed to them. Depending on the level and the organization, you could see any of these methods.

In town leagues, the goal of the divisions is often to have the most fair and balanced teams as possible. When all teams win and lose games, it is a testament to the even distribution of players.

Playoffs and a league championship can have a tremendous impact on how coaches view the process of team building. Some coaches will take every advantage they can to put together the most competitive team. Other coaches might head into the season with the ideas of equality and fairness for all, putting themselves at a distinct disadvantage and often resulting in drastic disparities in the standings.

Unfortunately, the desire to win can sometimes skew coaches and decision makers away from having the fairest possible teams and perhaps even take some underhanded measures.

For all-star and some travel teams, the goal almost always is to pick the players that make best team possible. But who and how those decisions are made are almost always a source of tension.

Every coach needs to understand the philosophy and circumstances of the league they will soon be coaching. If you go in blind, you might get burned.

What follows are some of my tips for what goes in to forming a team.

Team Building 101

Watch What You Say about Children

As you read some of the strategies and tactics in this section you might start to feel like you are a general manager in the mold of former Red Sox and Cubs GM Theo Epstein. While some of the methods are the same as the pros, never forget that your players are not professional athletes. They are children.

While that fact may seem obvious, it can be easy to forget when talking about who’s good and who’s not, ranking kids from best to worst and trading kids with other coaches. There is no avoiding some level of player judgment when picking teams. But