Coaches How to Coach, Players Feel and Play Better

Andrew Totheroh

Coaches how to coach, players feel and play better

This article brought up the many troubles that youth sports have in America today. The article informed that coaches that had been trained in the CET program were more compassionate towards the players, dropping the “winning is everything attitude” and focusing on teaching the game to the young players. The coaches stressed the fundamentals of the game they were coaching, and most importantly stressed the players to have fun. The article stated that the players that were coached by the CET trained coaches had more fun than the kids that were not coached by the CET coaches. It also showed that the young kids that had the

CET coaches had higher self-esteem, compared to the kids that did not have the CET coaches.

With America having an obesity problem today, the article said that the kids needed to have fun and high self-esteem to be motivated to get out there and be involved in sports, trying to control the obesity problem.

This article really hit home for me. I can remember playing youth baseball, and having a coach that was all about winning. He made the game miserable for me, to the point of me not wanting to play anymore. I hated going to the practices and games, and had very low self- confidence in myself. I hated my teammates, and only got along with the other kids that were in my position. When I finally worked up enough nerve to ask my parents about quitting, the response I got was one that I had expected. They told me no and that if I was going to start something, then I was going to have to finish. That life-lesson has been instilled in me ever since, and I am really glad that it has. As today, I have since made friends with my former Little League coach, and we have become friends, but there is that part of me that thinks that the only reason we have become friends is because of my success in football, but I cannot be sure.

As much as I hated my experience with baseball, as I look back on that it has helped me become the person I am today. Since I wasn’t the greatest, it has helped me relate to the kids that were not too good in football, and I did everything in my power to help them to succeed.

Now some quit, but a good majority have stuck it out and have become contributors at the varsity level this past football season, so I have been told. I am not trying to sound cocky, but I cannot help but think that I contributed a tiny amount to them staying with the game. This attribute I hope to carry over with me when I become a coach, after I graduate, something I hope to be very successful at.