An interesting look at parent problems begins, "The best team to coach is a team full of orphans." Some interesting suggestions follow.

What at first appears to be a look at soccer really is about coaching styles. The discussion of the hollering coach incorporates information that every one of us should consider. 

Practicing coaches often misunderstand what sports psychologists do. Many times, coaches think these people should have answers for every single problem a team or athlete faces. Nothing is further from the truth. Sports psychologists simply help everyone better understand some of the confusing things about sports.

Probably the best single resource for quick looks at critical issues in sports psychology can be found at the Competitive Advantage site.

Follow the Newsletter Archives link. There you'll find articles aimed at:  coaches, athletes and parents. In addition, the "Teaching Tales" relate practical examples of how the big ideas can be put to work for you.

All in all, a GREAT site for every coach.

A real challenge for coaches can be finding authoritative materials to consult. Probably the best place to start looking for "hard science" looks at sports is the Coaching Science Abstracts.

Each issue is given over to a single topic. Examples include "Overtraining," "The Young Athlete," Individual Differences," and "Measuring Practice Effort."

The reading can be difficult at times but most often rewarding.

"The ballplayer who loses his head, who can't keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all." 

Lou Gehrig

"I knew I wasn't going to be average."

Chamique Holdsclaw

 "You can play very well and lose, or play very badly and win. Things can happen. And you know what? That's just the way it goes."

Carl Eller

 "Sports is a powerful tool that our society needs to understand better and utilize better."

Anita DeFrantz

 "Good sportsmanship and reasonable standards of conduct are important."

Ted Turner

 "Victory is not necessarily a gold medal."

Gale Tanger

As coaches and athletes, we talk so often about injuries. So often what we know is limited by our experience. We know what we have experienced and not a lot else. So it's practically impossible for any coach to be expert in sports medicine.

Coaches need to understand what medical professionals are talking about, and coaches have to be able to talk knowledgably with parents and athletes. But where to get the information?

It turns out that a really good primer exists! The site has a lousy name, but super info. See "Sports Injuries" on Drugbase. (Here, for example, you'll find a one-page look at the entire ACL surgery / rehabilitation / recovery picture.)

Bookmark this to refer to the next time you need a ready reference on injuries.

Last time around, we sketched in the barest outline of an Outcomes Based Coaching Evaluation. As someone wrote me, there WILL be times when the coach needs help choosing season objectives in the four categories: (1) sports skills, (2) rules and strategies of the sport, (3) proper training and conditioning and (4) personal and social skills.

This presents the administrator or senior coach an opportunity. These people can assist the inexperienced coach in focusing on the critical knowledge and skills the athletes need. Such an effort has the added benefit of integrating the younger/less experienced coach into the program!

Coaching for success means teaching to meet these objectives. However, there are are other requirements of a "good" coach.

Most important is how the person works with athletes. Most of us acknowledge the ideal of Positive Coaching, but we may have trouble putting it into words or making it a part of an evaluation scheme. There are some resources that will help.

For administrators, look at a coaching behavior checklist. Some examples of what administrators might observe is instructive as well.

For coaches, check out "Positive Charting" and "Positive Coaching Scripts" at the Positive Coaching Alliance site. Other resources include Y-Coach, the Art of Positive Coaching, some interesting articles at MySportsGuru and an overview entitled See, Show, Say.

By the way administrators, my advice is to look at your "retention" rates. In other words, how many of your athletes come back to play another season? This really tells you whether you have positive coaches or not. My years as an athletic director taught me that high drop-out rates often indicate a problem coach. In fact, athletes often drop out when they aren't learning, aren't having any fun, and don't expect to be treated humanely.

So in addition to seeing whether the coaching outcomes are being realized, administrators now have two more tools to use: positive coaching and retention rates.

There are several other "nuts and bolts" elements that should go in to an evaluation of any coach. These will be looked at the next time around.