Youth-Athlete's Sport Blog

Bar none, the most emotionally draining element of coaching a youth sports team is interacting with the parents.  Having coached youth teams for over twenty seasons and been an officer in multiple youth organizations, I can personally attest to the fact that parent-coach interaction is important to the team's success.  The mismanagement of the parent-coach relationship by the coach, more then anything else, leads to their demise.  By establishing expectations early in the season, having a conflict resolution mechanism, and managing the disagreement discussion, a coach can reduce the emotional impact to themselves and maintain their team's positive attitude.  More...

The best athletes can have slumps, underachieve, and fail if they focus on the wrong success factors.  During these times of poor performance they are unable to let go of setbacks, errors, and mental mistakes that can be compounded by lack of self-confidence, fear of failure, unrealistic expectations.  As an athlete, leaving the mental side of performance to chance make you more susceptible to performance problems.  As a coach, a working knowledge of mental and sports psychology skills will help you develop athletes with more self-confidence, motivation, and experience peak performance.  Finally, as a parent, the principals of sport psychology, can help you encourage your child to reach their peak performance and develop mental toughness that enhances their self-esteem to achieve greatness, not only in their sport, but also in the bigger picture of life.  More...

Many athletes warm up either through static stretching or just starting to play.  Warming up by going straight into practice or a game is just a great way to get injured.  The traditional static warm-up stretches relax the muscles and cool down the core body temperature.  Energize the muscles and improve your range of motion with dynamic stretching during the warm-up process that will begin your body's transition from being at rest to a highly activated neuromuscular state and prepare you for peak performance. More...

A 2008 high school graduate and his high school baseball coach set up a charitable foundation (Courage for Life) to provide life encouraging sporting experiences for high school athletes.  Why?  This is the story of John Challis.  More...

On Saturday April 26, 2008 in the Div 2 Great Northwest Athletic Conference softball finals between Western Oregon and Central Washington, Mallory Holtman and Liz Wallace demonstrate an incredible act of sportsmanship after Sara Tucholsky hit a home run and is injured rounding first base.  What did Mallory and Liz do?  They carried the opponents outfielder around the bases, making sure Sara touched them all, for what eventually turned out to be the winning run.  Although Central Washington lost the game 4-2, Mallory and Liz act of kindness demonstrated sportsmanship that will be used as an example by parents and coaches for years to come.  More...

It is much easier to build you athlete's confidence when they are performing well, but unfortunately it is not easy to obtain successful results in sports.  As the coach, it is unrealistic for your players to expect you to be positive 7/24/365.  There are going to be times when you need to correct them after they make a mistake or are upset with them because of a lack of effort.  Many athletes admit that their coaches need to be hard on them at times to get their attention, which raises the question: How do you correct your athletes without them getting down on themselves?  This is the real trick of coaching - knowing how to preserve your athletes' confidence when you need to correct them.  More...

This story about golf balls in a jar highlights the fact that there are very few life priorities, but a lot of activities that can distract you from those things that are important things. More...

I recently posted the details about hitting fundamentals (stance, loading, bat speed generation, swing, follow through) and the feedback was pretty consistent.  "Great description, but where are the drills to perfect the swing!"   Truth be told, the dills we do can be found all over the web.  The secret sauce is not in some special new drill, but in organizing the hitting practice to maximize the fundamentally correct swings to develop proper muscle memory. More...

For the past two weeks the NCAA men's and women's basketball teams have been competing in their conference playoffs.  If you love basketball like I do then you have probably watched a few games.  This season seems to have a lot of parity between the top ranked teams in the conferences and many games are being decided by a couple points.  With so many close games, I am finding myself talking to my kids and players about the importance of each possession and how a misplay in an early quarter is just as devastating as one in the fourth quarter.  I keep bringing up a poem written by Jeff Smith while he was a Coach at Dayton that highlights the value of each possession.  More...

Player confidence at all levels of play, from youth recreational to the professional athlete, is fragile.  Handle with care!  The challenge with building confidence is that it is such a fragile construct.  An athlete might be confident one minute and then a play or two later have their confidence shattered.  It is not uncommon for an athlete's confidence to fluctuate throughout the course of a season.  Every player goes through a slump and needs to rebuild their self belief.

Competitive sports is more about failure than success.  On average, soccer and hockey players miss 90% of their shot attempts.  Baseball and softball's best hitters are out 65 to 70% of the time.  Basketball player miss half of their shot attempts.  Quarterbacks do not complete 40% of their pass attempts.  All of this natural failure tends to erode an athlete's confidence.   How a player deals with the built-in failure of the game eventually determines how successful they will be.

The key is not eliminating all doubts and fear, but having the player muster up enough confidence to perform despite the doubts and distractions.  More...