Pick a Different Target
It's not the new academy, travel sports, or 'elite' level youth buzzwords... It's you...
One of the best scenes in the OG Mighty Ducks movies is when Russ Tyler teaches Kenny Wu to talk trash.
Things don’t start so well for him in this department.
He yells, “Hey Ref!”
Quickly Russ covers his mouth with his glove and says, “pick a different target.”
Lesson: Certain targets aren’t to be messed with. Sometimes you pick the wrong target.
It’s super popular right now to blame academies for existing on Coaching Twitter. Do you want likes? Throw some shade at academies.
Travel sports are also a ‘problem’.
And people really don’t like the word ‘elite’ right now either.
Pepper all 3 terms in a tweet and virality will be sure to ensue.
Guess what? None of them are to blame.
Your favorite current catchphrase… “As many as possible for as long as possible” has nothing to do with ‘travel sports, or elite academies.”
If you’re still listening, your issue is leadership.
Players don’t quit because an academy opened down the road and they weren’t invited to join.
Players quit because their current coach sucks the fun out of the game by:
Boring players to death with 90’s drills
Enraging players by yelling at them about everything they do wrong
Excluding the idea of self-determination by making it all about the coach
Projecting their shit life onto the players
This list is not exhaustive either…
Players don’t quit because they were excluded from the new academy team down the road, they quit because they are being excluded right where they are.
Just like ‘better people make better All-Blacks’ better coaches make better retention numbers in sports.
Parents share the blame in this too. But I’d like to focus on coaching leadership although parenting is also ‘leadership’.
Keep it 200 as a coach and you’ll retain players who would have quit already due to ‘being really bad at it’.
Power Increases Willingness to Try
Tiffany did 100m hurdles in high school. She never did 300m hurdles.
Training for these two are different animals and if you’ve never sprinted while jumping 3/4 of a regulation-sized track before… You’ll understand why if you aren’t trained for it, it’s the closest thing to hell on earth.
She loved her coach though and when the team had the option of taking a ‘scratch’ at the meet or asking someone who has never done 300 hurdles to do them in place of a girl who got sick… The coach she loved asked her and she didn’t even hesitate.
Did she know it was going to suck? Yes
Did she start crying during the race when she wasn’t halfway done before every girl crossed the finish line in front of her? Yes
Was she humiliated because her coach chewed her out after and made it all about him? No.
Why?
Because the last part didn’t happen.
But it happens to thousands of youth players every season.
Coaching with Force creates cuts. And repeated openings of the same cuts don’t heal.
Coaching In-Powered heals and strengthens players to do things they’d never sign up for on their own.
Power prevents player drop-out.
Force ensures it.
If we are going to keep blaming the wrong things, we’ll never find the right solutions.
The problem isn’t what is being ‘programmed’ into you.
Play for the best coaches. Some are even at the ‘elite’ level. Some even coach at academies…
“That which we need the most will be found where we least want to look.” - Carl Jung
The last place most want to look?
The mirror.
Consider the course below my first attempt at a solution to the real problem…