By Ryan Nielsen & Brad Strand
(March 9, 2022)
As a high school teacher and coach for elementary school sports, junior high sports, and high school sports, I get an opportunity to work with some really great kids and young adults. One of the main reasons I got into education, of course, was to coach. I am now entering my 22nd year of teaching and 27th year of coaching. What started as a career in wanting to win at all costs, has turned into so much more. As coaches, we are competitive people. If we were not competitive in the first place we would not be coaching. The love for competition is what drives us. It is what makes us want to be the best we can be. It is what makes us push our students/athletes to succeed.
Through the years, my thought process on competition has changed. I do believe I am just as competitive as I have ever been but I also realize as coaches and teachers, we have the opportunity to do so much more. In fact, I think it is our responsibility to do so much more. Our student-athletes look to us for guidance. They look to us to tell them things are going to be ok. They look to us for discipline (even though they pretend they don’t want it). They look to us for confidence.
All of the above can be pretty daunting, and it is. As coaches, we tend to tell our student-athletes what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. I think parents tell their children what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. Why would we lie to our student-athletes and why would parents lie to their children? Because it’s easier. That’s it. And unfortunately, all we are doing is delaying some of the real-life dilemmas that occur in life. We struggle to teach anyone how to handle adversity, not just on the field, but in life. As I’ve grown as a coach, my main goal is to coach life lessons and if we win along the way, that’s an added bonus. This brings me to the point of this article, our student-athletes need to:
- Learn their role
- Accept their role
- Excel at their role
If student/athletes can learn these extremely important things, I think it will make them much more successful on the field, and more importantly, in life. As I continue to coach team sports and individual sports, (yes, even individual), I stress these three things every day. I even have a banner with these three things written on it hanging in my classroom. I use this to remind my students/athletes that as they go through life if they live by these three concepts, they will more than likely succeed in whatever they plan on doing. I’ll discuss each one in more detail.
Learn Your Role
With anything in life, you have to know what is expected of you. If you do not understand what your role is, it will lead to many problems. When we deal with our student-athletes, this can be tricky. We know not everyone is going to be the All-State player, and we know that we will have players that hardly see the field, but that does not mean they are not just as important as the leading scorer. The issue is trying to make sure our student-athletes understand what their role is. Then, on top of that, and sometimes much harder, we must make sure mom and dad know what their child’s role is. Too many times I see student-athletes understand their role perfectly, but mom and dad do not. As time goes by, their child starts to believe what mom and dad’s role for them is, which may be opposite of what we want, and then we run into problems. How do we avoid this? I think it is important to communicate with parents before the season starts. Obviously, it can be tough to meet with every parent individually, but that does not mean it can’t be done. At our school, we have a parents’ meeting for each sport. During this meeting (and athletes must attend as well), we discuss our rules and expectations, but we also delve into the “learn your role, accept your role, and excel at your role” concept. It is during this time when I will address the importance of being a good teammate, co-worker, son or daughter, and even a good mom or dad. I will discuss how it’s vital to their child’s success that mom and dad support whatever the role is.
At this meeting, I will hand out a sheet to mom and dad and their child about their expectations and then email the results to each parent and student-athlete. If ideas and expectations are vastly different from each other, then I will have an individual meeting with parents and the student/athlete to make sure we are on the same page. A fair amount of work indeed, but it can save so much trouble in the future. The other important aspect of this is to make sure that if you notice roles changing, you inform your player and mom and dad as well. I will sum this section up by simply stating, “if I know what I am supposed to do and what is expected of me, then I can start to accept it and excel at it, but I cannot do either of those if I do not know what it is.”
Accept Your Role
The toughest part for a student/athlete is accepting a role they might not want. This is going to happen all the time because you will have plenty of student-athletes who want to be the star and think they can be the star. At this point, it is important to be extremely honest when explaining why each student/athlete needs to accept their role. If everyone does not accept their role, you will still have problems. One of the things I do during this phase brings up examples of previous players in our programs who were absolutely vital to our program’s success even if they did not see the field. I will ask them if they remember a name, and of course, they say they do not. That is when I tell them this story:
Our boys’ basketball team in the winter of 2017-18 was a good one. We had just won the Class B Boys State Basketball Tournament in March of 2017, and despite losing some great seniors, we had a great team coming back. Expectations were high. We had just won the Class A Football title in November of 2017 and were hoping to continue that success. One of our captains on the football team was an absolute beast on the football field. He was clearly the leader of our team and was an All-Region standout. His teammates looked up to him, he held them all accountable and rallied the troops when necessary.
During the basketball season, he did the same exact thing. He was clearly our team leader; however, he was not an All-Region player. He did not even start. He hardly played other than at the end of games and he was a senior. The week of the state tournament in 2018, a local news team did a story about him being a “hometown hero.” Again, normally this would go to the star athlete, but they did a special on him even though he never really played. Finally, the State Tournament arrives. This student-athlete continued to lead the players and made sure everyone was staying motivated. Of course, he had been doing this all year in practices, making our big guys work hard every day in practice. He made us better all year and helped win the 2018 State Title. Without him, we would not have been back-to-back state champs. On more thing…he never played a second in the state tournament, his senior year, not one. The great part is, he NEVER ONCE COMPLAINED! He was so happy for everyone, for our stars, for our bench players, for our coaches. Our players ran to him when we won, that’s how much respect they had for him. This leader was clearly someone who knew his role, ACCEPTED it, and excelled at it. To this day I get chills talking about him. He is now finishing a business finance degree and will be successful because he has the necessary skills. If I owned a business, he would be the guy I would want because he will do the best for the entire company, not just him. So, once you know what your role is, you have to accept it. If you accept it, and if you can get all of your players to accept their roles, it gets easier for the next one: Excel at your role.
Excel at Your Role
Are you stuck with the first role you are given? Of course not! I tell our student-athletes if they excel at their role, they might earn different roles. I tell our student-athletes to make the best of whatever role they have. If everyone is excelling at the role they have accepted, our team should be able to do great things. More importantly, each student-athlete will understand how THEIR role contributes to the team’s success and also lead to their individual success. Like the story with the leader mentioned earlier, once he learned and accepted his role, he thrived and excelled in his role, which made our ENTIRE team better. What is fun about this stage, is if everyone is on board, practice is an absolute joy and your student-athletes will be great teammates and support each other 100%.
In my experience, if our student-athletes can learn about their roles, it will lead to success in every avenue of life. It helps athletes understand that in life they may not get everything they want, but that does not mean they cannot continue to strive for it. It helps so much with staying positive, rather than complaining about things. To this day, I still use these three concepts in my daily life. When I do not like a role, I still try to excel at it and see if I can get the next role along the way. I know if I understand what is expected of me and I accept that, I will excel on a daily basis more times than not. I truly believe student-athletes become so much more successful both on the field and more importantly life if they follow these strategies.
