A coach can make or break a team.
There’s a monumental difference between a coach whose players obey and a coach whose players follow. A coach can waste a player’s potential or a coach can help the player reach fulfillment.
I’ve had plenty of coaches, probably starting with my dad when I played Upward soccer when I was around 6 years old. From there, I went on to different coaches, whether in the same league or in a travel soccer team around the age of 11, or on to high school coaches.
I played in two travel soccer teams, though in different seasons. One team was the Drifters, and the other was the Lightning. However, I experienced the difference between a good coach and a great coach in those couple of seasons.
The Drifters and the Lightning were comparable teams by wins and players, but I greatly preferred playing for the Lightning simply because of coaching. One coach tended to run the team by force — if you finished last, you had to continue to do the drill until you didn’t finish last. He yelled and he screamed until he was blue in the face, and even though I learned a lot and got a lot better at soccer, I didn’t like him much as a person.
The other coach, however, brought out the best in a lot of the team. We all loved going to practice, and I learned a lot more about soccer and built more skills than I did with the other coach, despite the easier and shorter practices. The team felt much more welcoming and enjoyable, simply because we weren’t constantly pitted against each other or yelled at.
But shouting has to have a purpose.
Shouting and punishing drills are often necessary on the field and for some
players. I had a track coach who could yell loud enough that he was heard anywhere on the track, but it was almost always times or encouragement. He never tore us down or tried to frustrate us into running faster.
I found it so much easier to follow the coaches who didn’t use force to get us to obey. Those coaches had the team’s respect and trust because we knew they would get us to where we needed to be.
The ones who used force to make us obey were the ones who the team tended to resent and talk badly about outside of practice. I didn’t want to work hard for a coach like that and the team was so much more inclined to act up at practice, which only brought on more shouting and more punishment.
Looking back, the good coaches knew how to get us to fulfill our potential and taught us to use it to the fullest, instead of just making us play soccer. Winning games wasn’t everything — playing the game was. And the good ones did it without scaring us and without running us until we threw up.
That’s how coaching should be. The relationship between a coach and his team should be beneficial and cooperative, not harmful and full of resentment. It’s a lot less stress on both ends of the deal.