I was very fortunate as a
20-year-old kid to have a former high school basketball coach ask me to join
his staff. I began coaching and immediately started to picture how down the
road I would be known as one the greats. I had it all figured it out. Luckily
for me, I started at the freshman B level and was humbled immediately by what
it really takes to be great.
Working with young men at the
freshman level through the varsity level is more mental than anything else.
These young athletes have more going on in their lives than anyone realizes and
as a coach you serve the role of father, friend, advisor, and confidant to name
just a few. It is an honor to have a
young man come to you for help because it shows they have a confidence that you
have their best interest at heart. My
former head coach showed me that honor by giving me my coaching opportunity. He
wanted to instill confidence in each of his players.
There is energy in the room before
a game where players wait for the coaches. Each game has a different feel.
There are no guaranteed wins, but some games hold more meaning than others.
Often times in those pre-game speeches before important games he would ask the
players, “Do you feel that energy inside of you. Do you feel that inside of
your stomach? That’s not nervousness. Nervousness means that you are unprepared
for the task at hand. That is excitement! You are full of excited energy
because you have practiced smart and hard and you are fully prepared for the
challenge tonight!” It was such a simple thing to say, but I can still see the
confidence and focus the players exuded after he would say it.
My final project as an undergrad
was to create a coaching portfolio. At that point, I had shifted my focus to
training athletes instead of coaching a specific sport. My mentor encouraged me
to make it my own and reflect on what I truly believed was most important. I
would discuss strength programs and specific lifts with him, but in the end it
always came back to caring for the athletes and wanting them to succeed. The
head coach understood that confident players succeed, but how do we create
confident athletes. I created my coaching portfolio not with x’s and o’s but,
how I want to develop a culture of confidence in a program to help young
athletes in sport and beyond….to be continued
By: Steve Breitenstein
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