November 2015 – Winning Youth Coaching

November 17, 2015

WYC 062 – Youth Soccer – Reed Maltbie asks Whats your Echo: Coaching Beyond the Game

What does it take to be a winning youth coach? Listen in as Reed Maltbie shares stories and discusses his journey to becoming a successful youth sports coach.

Coach Reed experienced his own successful soccer career, including being a member of the 1992 Davidson College Final Four team. That dream season ended on their home field, in North Carolina, with a heartbreaking overtime loss to University of San Diego. As sad as it was, the experience left Reed with a deep understanding of what it takes to be a champion. At a school like Davidson, though, he also came to realize the fine balance between champions in the game and champions beyond the game. Soccer was a vehicle to becoming a better person.

Coach Reed turned down the opportunity to continue his career and stepped away from soccer in 1997 to focus on advancing his academic studies of sport, communication, and education. Since 1997 he has gone on to attain two Master’s Degrees. One degree is in sport psychology from Miami University. The other is in Education from the College of Mount St. Joseph. Just as in soccer, Reed excelled in the classroom, developing research that delved into the relationships between mental imagery and success and words and performance. He was highly respected by his peers for his assertions regarding the communication of coaches. He has had multiple papers published and has presented at several academic conferences.

Coach Reed combines his experiences as a player and coach, with his research as an academician to continually develop new methods and styles of coaching youth athletes. One thing continues to stand out to Coach Reed: the words coaches use are far more important than any skill they teach.

He is now the Executive Director of the STARS soccer club in Cincinnati, a TEDx speaker, and most recently joined the Changing the Game Project staff.

Twitter: @Coach_Reed

Facebook: /coachreed

website: coachreed.com

TEDx talk: http://youtu.be/EhRXQs0K6ls

Listen Now:

Listen in ITunes: Itunes link

Listen in Stitcher: Stitcher link

Quote

‘What’s your Echo? Coach beyond the game’

My Cringe & ‘Ah-Ha’ Moments

Being a coach is all about evolving
When young, Coach Reed was very aggressive, focused on winning
A-ha moment – Reed’s son started disparaging the referees while watching a game on TV, and Reed realized he was just imitating his Dad

Coaching your own kids

It’s a great blessing to spend time with your kids and coach them, but it comes with challenges
Enjoy the time, then pass them along when it’s time for someone else to coach them

Teaching Children & Keeping it Fun

Kids are very literal – ‘Grab some grass’ – they all grabbed grass and handed it to coach
Kids hang on every word you say – they will mirror your actions
Set up a proper classroom environment

HUGE IDEA #1

Scaffolding – Break down everything into chunks
- 4T Model – Technical, Topic, Tactical, Tie-in
Words echo – the words you use when coaching kids matter – be careful choosing what words you use

Self-Confidence and teaching kids to achieve peak performance

HUGE IDEA #2

Begin by reducing stress by reducing constraints:
- Lots of physical space
- No defense or few defenders to gain confidence first
- Stress can be good – but only if it’s manageable because they have had success and know they can overcome it
Turn the confidence internal so that they are doing it for themselves. Let them ask question and begin to solve the game themselves, so they get excited about solving the problem. Seek the joy- help them find the things they love and keep doing it.
Give them a challenge, and see if one of the players can figure it out on their own. If one does – let him/her show the team. If not, give them a hint and let them keep trying.

Culture – Discipline/Rewards/Teambuilding

Discipline

It’s all about building a culture. Instead of calling them rules – have the team create ‘Habits of excellence’

Rewards

Kids need constant feedback. Not just meaningless praise. Specific positive feedback that is something they can control.
Reward the actions you want to see, not just the goal-scorer. If a defensive player made a good stop and then passed the ball to the goal-scorer – make sure to acknowledge the defensive player and celebrate his great play too, not just the goal-scorer.

Connecting with and Impacting Kids

Reed was struggling with how the system was only helping the top 1% athletes, when he went to a speech by one of his players who talked about how he taught that kid integrity, brotherhood, teamwork, etc. It really helped Reed realize he was doing the right things for all the kids.

The One that Got Away

Coach Reed had a conflict with a league director who mandated that Reed coach the players in a way that the director wanted to build up their own development academy, but didn’t make sense for the team. Reed coached one game in the way the director wanted, and it went horrible. Reed regrets not standing up to the director and letting his team down.

Coachreed.com & TEDx talk

TEDx talk – ‘Whats Your Echo’ – http://youtu.be/EhRXQs0K6ls
Coachreed.com – Teaching coaches how to coach beyond the game

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November 5, 2015

WYC 061 – Mental Toughness – James Leath and Will Drumright talk Sports Psychology at the AASP

The Association for Applied Sport Psychology National meeting was a few weeks ago – so for Episode 61 we invited 2 sports psychology guys who attended to share with us some lessons learned.

James Leath has been a WYC guest previously in episodes 50 and 31. James’ first interview on the show, WYC Episode 31, was a huge hit and is the #1 downloaded episode all-time on the show.

Will Drumright is a sport psychology coach who work with Dr. Rob Bell, providing mental skills and performance psychology training to coaches, athletes, and teams. Will focuses on the high school and middle school athletes. Will is also a professional Ultimate Frisbee player and coaches the local high school Ultimate Frisbee team.

Twitter: @jamesleath; @wcdrummy15

Listen Now:

Listen in ITunes: Itunes link

Listen in Stitcher: Stitcher link

What was the biggest ‘a-ha’ moment you had during the meeting?

James

HUGE IDEA #1

Teach the human, not the athlete. Children are not mini-adults, they are children. If you don’t first build a relationship – then the gameplan you develop doesn’t matter. Tim Elmore quote from Generation iY book: ‘Great teachers build a relationship so strong that it can bear the weight of truth.’ If they understand that you have their best interest in mind, they will respond to and listen to coaching and constructive criticism.
Love. What do you love about your sport? And as a coach I need to love my players for who they are, not for them to please me.

Will

The athlete is a human first.
Speak to athletes in a way that increases their intrinsic motivation

Were there any discussions on how sports psychology has changed over the past 10-15 years as our society and our society’s approach to youth sports is very different today vs. 10-15 years ago?

Will

HUGE IDEA #2

The importance of providing resources to athletes so they can take care of themselves as individuals outside of athletics.
Quote: ‘Sport doesn’t inherently build character, it just has the opportunity to do so.’- Dr. Greg Dale, Duke University
Is your message slippery or sticky? Your message is only effective if it resonates with your athletes.

James

‘Culture eats strategy for lunch’ – Dr. Greg Dale, Duke University. One way to create culture – address the elephants in the room.
You can’t coach the kids today the way you were coached growing up. There are too many other options and they will quit.

Learn any new routines for brushing-off mistakes?

Will

Develop a flushing routine. It has to be unique, something that is meaningful to the individual athlete.
Take a centering breath.

James

It’s all about giving meaning to things. Shared terminology. James has worked out a ‘word’ that has meaning with his wife – if he says ‘I’m in a folder’ – it means ‘Hey honey, I love you, so great to hear from you, I can’t talk right now because I’m in the middle of something, I’ll call you as soon as I can.’
‘Great cultures have a ton of inside jokes’

What’s the best story or analogy you heard?

James

Yoda on the back of Luke Skywalker – Justin Su’a. Coaches who fail are the ones who want the spotlight – instead coaches should want to have their students rise up and be stronger than their teacher.

Will

Matts Stutzman – Holds world records for longest archery shot – and he was born without arms – ‘How do you become the best. Period. No excuses.’ His parents didn’t modify anything for him, they allowed him to struggle. And that’s what made him a champion. Failure is a key part of learning!

Hear any out-of-the-box approaches that you thought might have some validity?

Will

Dr. Greg Dale, Duke University – ‘Are you effective when you are listening to 3 things at the same time?’ – Realize as a parent you are 1 of 3 voices the kids are hearing – so think about if you need to say anything while the athlete is playing a game
Coaches need to spend more time on warm-ups. Spend time addressing all the different aspects of the game – the technical, the tactical, the mental.

James

Do you say ‘My team’ or do you say ‘Our team’? Parents and coaches – give the experience back to the kids -it’s not about you. Great John O’Sullivan post about this: