When we think of great coaches, we are drawn to the greats that we watch on ESPN each week. They are the brilliant college and professional coaches who are exceptional strategic tacticians, who prepare their team each week to step on the field, compete, and win. They utilize their players strengths, place them in the right positions to use those strengths, and make sure the other team cannot expose their weaknesses. Their goal is to use their players, get them to play in a system, and win more games than they lose. That is what they get paid for, and frankly, not producing that result will find them quickly out of a job. These coaches are paid to win, and they approach the season with that goal in mind. Unfortunately, as coaches and parents, we watch these coaches and assume this is how a coach of 9 year olds should coach as well. We have a warped sense of what a "great coach" looks like because we tend to only study the ones who get paid to win. We know little about the ones who are the best at coaching with kids.

When a coach takes over a team of kids, is his primary job to evaluate these kids' strengths and weaknesses, find out which position they are best at, and then formulate a team system to give those kids the best chance of winning all season? When youth coaches do this, they are often praised. The coach's approach is one that helps professionals at the higher level keep their jobs, but is fundamentally backwards for kids in terms of their development and learning. It helps the team win, makes the coach look good, makes the kids look good, parents are happy, so it must be the right way to approach the season. I am sure there are not a lot of complaints to coaches who take this approach and finish the season on top.

But I believe the coach fails at his most important task when approaching his responsibility in this manner. He fails to actually teach. Let me give you an example...

I read a story about a basketball coach who asked his team to press when defending. When the other team inbounded the ball, he wanted his team to try to win the ball close to the basket for easy lay ups and shots close to the basket. On the surface, this sounds like great coaching. And fundamentally, the idea is not wrong. That is a part of the game. But the reason behind it was where the coach failed to do his job.

He had his team press because his players were not very good at handling the ball. They could not bring the ball up the court and they did not pass very well. When his team was forced to bring the ball up the court, they often lost it and gave up lots of points. Instead of teaching the players to improve their dribbling, passing, and challenging them to get better in this area, the coach chooses a different approach. He tried to hide his team's weakness by applying a very smart tactical plan which would help his team win more games and have more success (in terms of wins and losses).

This coach was proud of his team and their ability to execute his plan. They ended up winning the league championship. This in a lot of people's mind would be an example of high level coaching. Maybe this coach even won "Coach of the Year" for helping his team of players who were not that good individually achieve so much. But the sad truth is that this coach took the very easy, LAZY way, out and failed to actually coach.

If you have a team of players who cannot perform fundamental skills, or you have players on your team who individually struggle in certain areas of the game, COACHING IS NOT FINDING WAYS TO HIDE THOSE WEAKNESSES or helping the kids compensate for those weaknesses by tactical decisions you force them to make. Coaching, actual high level - youth coaching, is helping those kids improve on those areas. Your job is not to help them win. Your job is to help them learn how to play the game so they can win.

In the case of this story, I feel a coach who was truly concerned about helping those kids get better, would ask each player on that team to constantly work on their dribbling and passing, trying to bring the ball up the court in each and every game (not just practice), until the players learned how to do it. Now, that is something that would have lasted much longer than just a single season of success for the players. It would have much more value than the plastic trophy. They would have learned how to work to get better and what it takes to EARN success.

Now what do you think would have happened if the coach took the “development” approach? How do you think that would have been received by the parents? Most likely, as the players were taking their lumps, giving the ball away, and losing games, the coach would have received many emails or phone calls questioning why he kept making the kids try to dribble and pass the ball up the court. In the stands, the parents may have muttered to each other or under their breath, “This coach has no idea what he is doing! Can’t he see the issue? Why doesn’t he have the kids just….”

So, I do not put the blame on just the coach. At times, it is the coach perpetuating what the parents are expecting of the coach, or what a coach feels the parents are expecting him to do. Often a stray from our warped view of the role of a coach is not accepted well by the masses. Again, we have an idea that a coach is suppose to be the same type of guy or woman we see on ESPN, and we fail to see that a youth coach should act, teach, and interact with players in a much different way and have completely different goals for the group and each individual.

In this case, do I have any issue with a coach teaching his team how to press? No. I think kids playing a sport should learn all different ways to attack and defend. Pressing is part of basketball and kids should learn how to do that. My issue is simply with the reason behind it, and the motivation to make the kids play a certain way to avoid actually teaching them how to play the game and helping them get better. Short term success, a single season, is given more value than a longer term purpose and value of sports… to help kids learn how to learn, struggle, develop, and grow.

Now, the one thing that coaches who we love to watch on ESPN, and I look up to, that I try to adapt to my coaching with the players I work with is how those coaches help each player believe they are capable of doing much more than they think is possible. They understand how critical a player’s confidence and belief in their ability is to their performance on the field. They are experts at making sure their players are in the right mindset when faced with competition or an obstacle to overcome.

You should expect that from your youth coach. It is one of the most important things a coach can provide a young player. If a coach can instill in a player the mindset that skills can be learned and developed, to be confident in what they are capable of doing, and never be afraid to fail, that any type of REAL SUCCESS will require a large amount of failure, then the coach has given the player much more than any single win or trophy will come close to providing.

I have said it before... youth coaches are not paid to win games. They are paid to teach and develop young people using a sport. A youth coach should not act like or have the same goals as the coaches who get paid to win games; whose jobs depend on it. The approach is different because the goal is different. We need to stop confusing the two and assume our child’s coach should act the same. In fact, the more of a difference, the more strange it may look and feel, the more appropriate and better of a job the youth coach is doing.

We should not treat the kids like they are professional athletes, and we should not expect our youth coaches to act like they are coaching professional athletes.