POSITIVE COACHING ALLIANCE RESOURCES
PLANNING A POSITIVE SEASON
Intentional Program Design is an important element of creating a supportive team environment where all players feel engaged, welcomed, and safe. Planning out a season in advance can help your team accomplish sport focused and social emotional focused goals. While things may change over the course of a season and it is important to stay flexible, a basic layout can help keep you on track. Here are some tips to plan your season.
Fitness Development
Your players will start the season at varying fitness levels. Many may not have had much opportunity to be physically active. Assess fitness levels at the beginning of the season. Consider running the Pacer (Beep) Test to get a baseline fitness reading for each player. Then, at the end of the season, test the players again to see their improvement. No matter where they start the season, all players should improve their fitness by the end of a season.
Skills Development
Sports Skills – Think of your sport’s fundamental skills (e.g. soccer has dribbling, passing, receiving, and shooting.) Plan when you will introduce each of these skills over the season. Return to these skills over and over during the season so players can work on their mastery. Players develop at different rates, so remember to support each player around individual needs.
Social Emotional Skills – Be intentional about integrating youth development elements into your program, such as empathy, safety, team building, youth engagement, persistence, optimism, and self-regulation, to name a few.
Connection
Creating a welcoming, supportive team atmosphere takes time. Start the season with ‘get to know you’ activities that build friendships and trust between players. As the season progresses, encourage your players to support each other and problem solve together. Don’t forget that your connection with players is important as well – how will you build relationships with them?
Game Day!
If your team doesn’t participate in a league which plays games on a regular basis, incorporate a game day at the end of the season. This gives players a chance to show off the skills they have developed over the season. Make it a true community event by inviting parents and families!
Recognition and Celebration
After a great season coaching your team, celebrate your experience – you deserve it! Hold a team party and hand out awards that recognize the efforts and fun contributions of players; host a family potluck where the team and their families celebrate the season; write a short note to each player about their contribution to the team; or give each player a participation certificate. Use one of these strategies or create your own!
ALIGN FAMILY GOALS
Parent/Caregiver 100 Point Exercise – Defining Goals with Your Athlete
This 100-point exercise can help parents/caregivers and their athlete understand each other’s sports goal. Use the form to allocate a total of 100 points, indicating the emphasis you place on the various goals listed. Parents/Caregivers and athletes should fill out their forms individually and use them to prompt conversation about their shared sports experience.
BUILD AN IMPROVEMENT MINDSET
Nurturing an Improvement Mindset
Providing athletes with tools to overcome and learn from mistakes will benefit them both on and off the field. Nurturing your athletes’ growth mindset is a great way to help them see skill building as an ongoing journey. A growth mindset is the belief that, with effort, you can develop and improve your skills and abilities. It guides the response to challenge and ability to reflect and gather feedback when facing setbacks.1 In other words, setbacks are seen as the ability to learn and grow instead of a point of failure.
In contrast, a fixed mindset is the belief that ability is unchangeable, leaving little room for personal agency in improvement.2 In simple terms, when approaching a challenge, an athlete/coach with a growth mindset will say, “I am working to improve at this,” while an athlete/coach with a fixed mindset will say, “I am bad at this.”
Athletes alone are not responsible for ensuring they have a growth vs. fixed mindset. It’s the responsibility of a coach to help athletes learn and develop a growth mindset. To help nurture a growth mindset amongst their athletes, coaches can:
-Model growth mindset by recognizing that every athlete has the ability to improve and develop.
-Examine potential biases that may influence your perspective on an athlete. Use this self-awareness to intentionally shift thinking about that athlete.
-Give process praise – the type of feedback that acknowledges the hard work that led to an athlete’s successful outcome.
-“You continued dribbling with your left hand today at practice, even when it was hard.”“
-I can see how much you practiced hitting the cut off player every day at practice and that work helped you do that in a game today!”
-Redefine FAIL as First Attempt In Learning. Emphasize that, especially when trying something new or developing skills, athletes can expect to make mistakes. They should view those mistakes as opportunities to learn and improve the next time they try.
-Bring awareness to language. What type of language are coaches/athletes using when they encounter challenging moments? Guide athletes towards using language that reflects a growth mindset.“
-I will keep working on my left foot to get better control with it!” vs. “I’ll try to work on my left footed control.”“
-I am a dependable teammate.”“
-I can guard their best player and will work hard to do so.”
-Incorporate growth-based visualization into practices by talking athletes through certain scenarios and emphasizing a growth mindset focused response.
-Ex. Have athletes envision a match up against the best player on the other team. Ask the athlete to visualize how they would approach it and share their thoughts with a teammate. Encourage them to not assume they’ll get beaten one on one, but to think of different strategies to overcome the challenges they may face.
https://appliedsportpsych.org/blog/2021/04/revisiting-growth-mindset-as-a-core-capacity-of-sport-psychology/