Coaching

A Great Year to Study Leadership

We must present examples of positive leaders with integrity and the values we want to instill in our children, says a longtime baseball coach, and the athletic field provides players with the opportunity to learn and test those values.

A Youth Coach's Secret Weapon: Video

Teaching technique, engaging parents, celebrating achievement, and fundraising; a youth coach's to-do list never ends. Luckily, there's a secret weapon. Capturing video of games and practices can actually help you with all of these things. Here's how:

Female Coaches At FIFA Women's World Cup: Do They Have Natural Advantages Over Men?

If you've been watching the FIFA Women's World Cup, you may have noticed that the head coaches of most of the 24 national teams competing in Canada are men. In fact, only seven teams (the USA, Ecuador, Germany, Costa Rica, Switzerland, Sweden, and Ivory Coast) are led by female head coaches.

While that number is five more than when I watched from the stands at Giants Stadium as the U.S. played Mexico in the 1999 Women's World Cup, it is still a distressingly low number.

If you've been watching the FIFA Women's World Cup, you may have noticed that the head coaches of most of the 24 national teams competing in Canada are men, a gender imbalance that persists despite what some believe to be natural advantages women enjoy over men as coaches.

Let's Celebrate Mother's Day By Recognizing Critical Role of Sports Moms

 

Ask the average person what special day is celebrated in May, and most will say Mother's Day. Ask sports fans who athletes most often thank when they are interviewed on television after a big win, and they are most are likely to say their moms. Now, ask someone in what month does the country celebrate National Sports Moms Month, and I bet you would be met with a lot of quizzical looks.

Fact is that there hasn't been such a month, at least one that I could find. So, in 2012, I decided to declare May to be Sports Moms Month.

Seven years ago, MomsTEAM's founder decided that sports moms should be celebrated, not just on Mother's Day, but for an entire month, so she declared May to be Sports Moms Month. Here's why.

Coaching Youth Sports: Getting To The Heart Of The Matter

The heart of every team and player experience is the coach. Coaches have a choice of going down one of two paths. One is a win-based approach. The other is often called developmental, but I prefer to call it "relationship- and experience-based coaching. "

Win-approach coaching is the most common by far (especially these days).  It involves short benches, and scheduling more and more games to build a winning record.  As a result, the dialogue between coach and players is one-sided and mostly counter-productive. It can result in brawls during the post-game handshake line, reckless play, lack of respect for the rules, opponents, officials, coaches and the game itself.

SmartTeams Talk Short: "Buy In " Needed From Coaches To Improve Sports Injury Prevention Says Nationwide Children's MacDonald

A leading pediatric sports medicine specialist says a better job needs to be done to get high school and youth coaches to "buy into" injury prevention, through increased education, physical follow-up, and providing web-based monitoring.

SmartTeams™ Talks: Safe4Athlete's Katherine Starr Says Four Steps To Preventing Sexual Abuse Of Athletes

In a powerful and frank SmartTeams Talk, a two-time Olympic swimmer and sexual abuse victim talks about the steps required to prevent abuse of athletes by coaches.

SmartTeams™ Talk: Joe Ehrman Urge Coaches To Reclaim Sport's Educational, Social, and Ethical Role In Society

In an inspiring and thought-provoking SmartTeams Talk, Coach for America founder and former NFL player, Joe Ehrmann, offers four specific ways coaches can use their unique position in a society in which sports is our "secular religion" to transform the lives of their players and reclaim sports' educational, social and ethical role.

SmartTeams™ Talk: Rosalind Wiseman Offers Parents and Coaches Ways To Use Sports To Teach Important Life Lessons

In an entertaining and informative SmartTeams Talk, best-selling author and parenting expert Rosalind Wiseman provides concrete advice to youth sports parents and coaches on how they can help nourish and maintain the relationship youth athletes have with adults.

Your Child's Coach: Transactional or Transformational?

There are 53.8 million kids playing sports in the United States and, most of the time, when they talk about sports with their teammates and their parents, they begin with these two words: "Coach said... ."

It's not at all surprising, as research shows that, in the hierarchy of adults, coaches occupy the top spot in the minds and hearts of their players. Understanding this stature places quite a responsibility on youth and high school coaches. What they say, and do, really does matter.

Coaches occupy the top spot in the minds and hearts of their players. Understanding this stature places quite a responsibility on youth and high school coaches, who have a choice, says a longtime hockey coach, between being a transactional coach or a transformational coach.
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