Here’s a question for parents who spend many hours, lots of money and time for their student athlete, child to play “high level” athletics. Is your child being coached at a high level? High level in this sense includes more than just a coach who can teach them how to field a ground ball or lay down a bunt. After all, less than 5% will reach their first goal of playing at one of the big 5 conference (Pac 12, SEC, Big Ten, Big East, ACC) schools.
Does your kids coach help them get closer to their dreams and goals or are they pushing them further away? It is either one or the other, it can’t be both. Now of course I am not implying that your child’s success comes down solely on the coach, because it does not. In fact, it should be a partnership between the parents and the coaches. However, there are things that high-level programs should be doing to prepare their student athletes to reach their dreams and goals of playing at one of the Big 5 schools.
Coaching at a high-level means preparing student athletes for things bigger than the sport they are playing; it means getting them ready for the real world.
Success and or failure at the very school they work so hard to get to sometimes come down to what they learned at the youth level.
The first thing that should be in place for every team, is a team mission or goal that the players created through a facilitated process. This teaches the student athlete a skill set that they will need and use at every level in their life to reach their full potential. This process invites the player into something bigger than themselves and when they are part of something bigger than them you will see their level of play rise which ultimately helps them in the recruiting process.
Have they written out their list of dreams that they see for themselves? Einstein said that imagination is everything, that it’s greater than education because it is the preview of life’s coming attraction. To set SMART goals, you need to have a vision of what will happen if you achieve that goal, a dream. Coaches have power and respect that if they introduce this process the likely hood of the player buying into it and adapted it to their life is greater. I get that every coach may not be skilled at facilitating this type of process, but what would a coach do if they were not great at coaching pitching, they would bring in a pitching coach otherwise the parent of a pitcher would find a team that had elite coaching at pitching. High level coaches teach or bring someone to teach their elite players how to goal set based on their dreams and how to make the goal a reality.
Lastly coaches who help develop the player’s mental toughness, meaning they help the student athlete create a strong self-image, so that the student athlete plays with a champion attitude.
#Dont Be A Crazy Ass Parent