Have you ever had a coach believe in you?
It’s such a simple concept, and yet I wonder how often it happens. A coach’s job is to take a player as they are and make them better. And often that comes with criticism and judgment.
When I was coaching the women’s lacrosse team at Harford Community College, I had a superstition.
For the first hand full of seasons I coached, I felt it was bad luck for me to tell my teams how good they were.
Typing this out loud for all to read makes me feel silly. One reason I became a mindset coach is to save people from mistakes I made earlier in my coaching career so they can be better coaches than I was.
So here I am, admitting I did it wrong.
I had some incredibly talented teams and incredible human beings over the years. And for the first handful of years I was a coach, I did those teams wrong. I never breathed life into them. I was always critiquing and suggesting. I encouraged, but I never truly told them how incredible I thought they were.
Why? Probably because when I was starting out as a coach that’s what I thought coaches did. In fact, I felt like it would make me appear weak or soft if I did anything different. And as a female in a male coaching world, the last thing I wanted to do was appear weak or soft.
I don’t remember any of my coaches breathing life into the teams I played for over the years as an athlete. I don’t remember my coaches flat-out telling us how much they believed in us. How much they believed in me. How much they loved us. How much they loved me. All I remember from my entire athletic career was simply working really hard and hoping they did.
When I coached at HCC, I held those thoughts safe in my own mind, never speaking them out loud. One week before the 2019 National Championship weekend, that all changed.
It’s no accident that in the same week I started telling my team how much I believed in them and loved them, we ended up winning the National Championship.
And really it’s all because of a stranger. To this day, I don’t know who she is. She walked out of my life as fast as she walked in. But the lesson she taught me I carry to this day.
A week before our 2019 national tournament, a woman messaged me asking if she could come out to a practice and talk with my team about a service she provided. I agreed and welcomed her in to observe and talk with my girls. When practice had finished and the team had left, I remember standing with this woman on the turf and catching up. At one point in the conversation, she turned to me and asked if I believed my team had a chance at winning nationals.
To this day, I don’t know why she asked that. It was out of the blue from what I remember and took me back a little. I told her I did believe in them. And the next question she asked really stuck with me. She said,
“Have you told them how much you believe in them?”
I answered with a line about not wanting to mess with their minds, like I might jinx them or something. She wisely said,
“It will mess with them more if they don’t know what you believe.”
I had never thought of it like that before. So the very next practice, I took the team into the locker room, and what followed was one of those moments that helped change my life forever. I remember sitting in the common area and looking at each of those incredible humans in the room with me. And I remember the moment I breathed life into my players.
I looked around the room and told them, “I believe you are the most incredible group of athletes that has walked this campus. I believe you deserve to win nationals this weekend. Because you all have worked so hard. And have earned the right to try for it.” And? I remember crying. Because I meant every word that I was speaking. And as they started to cry with me, I knew not only that they understood how much I believed in them but also that they believed in me.
That weekend at Nationals, we had players do things out on that field that I still don’t have the words for. But I do know this: I witnessed miracles that weekend. And my team did too. Because we believed in each other. We spoke it. We meant it. And we went to battle knowing that, win or lose, we had earned the right to try.
I was speaking with a parent of a mindset client of mine the other day. They were telling me that their child’s coach had decided to stop giving them feedback, good or bad. This was not an opinion or observation but rather what the coach told the parents in a conference regarding the progress of their child.
I believe coaches have a pretty big responsibility to their athletes. I have to remind myself of this often. We have these kids on our club teams for a year. They are contractually ours for one year.
If we don’t breathe life into them, who will?
Not themselves. Not their teammates. Not their opponents. They don’t listen to their parents (I kid, I kid…but seriously). I believe that coaches have 2 choices with their athletes: Build ‘em up or break ‘em down.
My hope is that we can get out of our own way as coaches and start breathing life into our players. Giving feedback, hyping them up, reminding them that we believe in them.
Because here’s the thing. As much as coaches need to believe in their players, I’ve found the weight lies more in athletes believing in themselves. And if they don’t think the coach believes in them, athletes will face a harder time believing in themselves. If a coach gives up on a player, and stops coaching them all together? It’s game over in my book.
I just started coaching a new lacrosse team last month, and prior to our practices this fall, I’ve already asked them what they believe about themselves. Once in a Google Form for the coaching staff to see and once in front of the team so the team knows what we are working with. Because I think it’s important to know what we are working with. And from there, my goal is to make everyone on the team believe they belong, believe they have a purpose, believe that I believe in them, and with all of that, my hope is that they believe in themselves.
Coaches, dare to be different. Build your athletes up. Hype them up for trying. Give them good feedback that they can take and work on because they know you believe they can do it. Give compliments freely. Don’t hold them close.
Choose to breathe life into your players.
And watch your athletes unlock themselves. That’s the real win as a coach.
