The Double-Goal Coach

by Thompson, Jim

• ISBN13: 9780060505318
• ISBN10: 0060505311
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-01-01
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

The Double-Goal Coach is filled with powerful coaching tools based on Jim Thompson's Positive Coaching Alliance. These strategies reflect the "best-practices" of elite coaches and the latest research in sports psychology.Hundreds of workshops have shaped these tools for maximum effectiveness and ease of use. The lessons and activities can be used in the very next practice to make sports fun and to get the best from players. The Double-Goal Coach provides the framework for coaches and parents to transform youth sports so sports can transform youth -- allowing young athletes to enjoy sports while learning valuable life lessons.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Phil Jackson	xi
Preface: Beyond the Barking Dog: Seeing the Big Picture in Youth Sports	xv
Introduction: The Impact of Coaches	xvii
About This Book
1 The Double-Goal Coach:	1	(16)
Beyond the Win-at-All-Cost Mentality
My 50th Birthday Party	1	(2)
The Power of Mental Models	3	(1)
The Villain	4	(2)
The Double-Goal Coach Model	6	(1)
Misconceptions About Positive Coaching	7	(5)
The First Goal: Winning	12	(1)
The Second Goal: Life Lessons	12	(3)
My Fantasy	15	(2)
2 Redefining Winner:	17	(44)
From the Scoreboard to Mastery
Sport Psychology at the Elite Level	17	(2)
Neither Rocket Science Nor Brain Surgery	19	(1)
The Scoreboard Definition of Winner	20	(2)
The Central Problems with the Scoreboard	22	(2)
JUST FOR PARENTS: "Pressure Doesn't Bother Me"	24	(6)
The ELM Tree of Mastery	26	(4)
JUST FOR PARENTS: "It's a Long Race"	30	(32)
Tool Kit for Redefining Winner	34	(24)
Life Lessons: Winners in Life	58	(1)
Tool Kit Summary	59	(2)
3 Filling the Emotional Tank:	61	(40)
Fuel for Sports and Life
The Portable Home Team Advantage	62	(1)
Coachable Kids	63	(1)
How to Fill Tanks	63	(4)
The Magic Ratio	67	(4)
JUST FOR PARENTS: "But You Have to Ask"	71	(31)
The Key to a Positive Experience	71	(1)
Tool Kit for the Emotional Tank	72	(26)
Life Lessons: Emotional Intelligence for Life	98	(1)
Tool Kit Summary	99	(2)
4 Honoring the Game:	101	(46)
The Bottom Line for a Positive Coach
The Devaluation of Sportsmanship	102	(1)
Beyond Sportsmanship to "Honoring the Game"	102	(1)
An All-Too-Common Scenario	103	(1)
The Leader of the (Whole) Team	104	(5)
The Privilege of Participation	109	(1)
The ROOTS of Honoring the Game	110	(8)
JUST FOR PARENTS: "So They Won't Be Able to Tell"	118	(5)
JUST FOR PARENTS: "Does This Mean I Can't Yell at the Ref?"	123	(5)
JUST FOR PARENTS: "You're the Kind of Person Who..."	128	(6)
Tool Kit for Honoring the Game	128	(6)
JUST FOR PARENTS: "I've Never Seen You Like This"	134	(14)
Life Lessons: Honoring the Game of Life	142	(2)
Tool Kit Summary	144	(3)
5 Developing a Team Culture:	147	(28)
Taking Your Team from Ho-Hum to Hum!
The Power of Team Culture	148	(2)
Five Elements of Team Culture	150	(19)
JUST FOR PARENTS: "The First Time Anyone Thanked Him"	169	(6)
Bringing Parents into the Culture	170	(2)
When the Players Own the Culture	172	(3)
6 Dynamic Practices:	175	(40)
Where Team Culture Is Created
The Coach as Catalyst	175	(1)
Preparation-Part 1: Mental Preparation	176	(2)
Preparation-Part 2: A Written Practice Plan	178	(5)
JUST FOR PARENTS: "When I Become the Coach"	183	(32)
The Structure and Flow of Practice	183	(23)
Dealing with Behavior Problems	206	(7)
Mostly, I Miss the Practices	213	(2)
7 Meaningful Games:	215	(26)
Where Team Culture Pays Off
The Trauma of Games	215	(2)
Overcoaching and the Romance of Leadership	217	(3)
Strategist and Tank Filler	220	(1)
JUST FOR PARENTS: "You Know, It's Cold on the Slopes"	221	(13)
The Coach as Game Role Model	221	(1)
Avoid the Obvious Criticism	222	(1)
Using Games to Develop Players	223	(2)
When Games Begin	225	(9)
JUST FOR PARENTS: "Debriefing the Game"	234	(7)
Assessment	238	(1)
Games Lingering in Memories	238	(3)
8 The Second-Goal Parent:	241	(42)
Helping Your Child Make the Most of Youth Sports
Duct Tape Across the Mouth	241	(1)
The Signpost and the City	242	(2)
The Big Picture and Youth Sports Myopia	244	(1)
The Second-Goal Parent	245	(2)
Three Crucial Relationships	247	(1)
The Primary Relationship: Being There for Your Child	247	(14)
The Complicated Relationship: Developing a Partnership with Your Child's Coach	261	(14)
The Toughest Relationship: Managing Yourself	275	(5)
Panning Back to See the Big Picture	280	(2)
The Good Old Days	282	(1)
9 Conclusion:	283	(4)
The Legacy of Coaches
Appendix A: The Positive Coaching Alliance Strategy to Transform Youth Sports	287	(12)
The PCA Strategy on Three Levels	287	(6)
How Things Change	293	(1)
The Exercise of Personal Power	294	(2)
How We'll Know When We've Won	296	(1)
The Battle for the Soul of Youth Sports	297	(2)
Appendix B: Positive Coaching Alliance Advisory Committee	299	(4)
Appendix C: Intervening on the Sidelines: An Honoring-the-Game Plan for Coaches	303	(8)
Bibliography	311	(8)
Acknowledgments	319	(10)
Index	329

Excerpts

Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.

- Carol Williams

A fictional 11-year-old character in the film Trouble Along the Way (1953)

From When Pride Still Mattered by David Maranis

My 50th Birthday Party

When my wife, Sandra, turned 50, she decided to do something dramatic to commemorate the event. She decided she would climb Half Dome at Yosemite. A year or so later, I became 50 and wanted to do something less demanding, so we celebrated by having a party.

We invited people from all of our various lives: her job, my job, coaching, church, etc. Because so many people at the party wouldn't know one another, I created an "ice-breaker" exercise: a quiz with an interesting fact about each person. During the first hour of the party, everyone would try to find out which fact went with which person.

My mother, Marjorie, was visiting us from North Dakota. While I was putting together the quiz, she hovered behind me reading the clues. When I got to "This person danced with my mother in a strange place," she couldn't contain herself. "Who could that be?" she wondered. I offered that she'd just have to wait and see who showed up!

This was a particularly mystifying question to my mother because she hadn't gone dancing for a long time. My step-father, Orville, had died the previous year, and he had been ill for some time before that, so my mother's opportunities to dance were few and far between in recent years. And whoever this person was, she must have been wondering if he traveled from North Dakota to California for my 50th birthday party.

A few weeks earlier, my mother and I attended a high school basketball game coached by my friend, Ron Rossi. Marj and Ron's wife, Amy, sat together and had a great time talking. One of their topics of conversation was how much they liked to dance and how little chance they got to do it.

After the game, the three of us waited to go out to dinner while Ron talked to his team in the locker room. The next thing I knew, Amy and Marj were doing the jitterbug on the basketball court.

But now, several weeks later, Marjorie had forgotten this. I was sure that she would remember as soon as Ron and Amy came to the door. Because my mother didn't know most of the people at the party, she lit up when Amy and Ron arrived. It didn't take Amy and Marj long to relive their dancing experience on the basketball court.

Halfway through the party, it was time to identify which person went with which clue, and my mother still hadn't filled in her sheet with the person who danced with her in a strange place. How could this be? How could she not know the answer when this person was literally sitting in front of her? (Take a moment to see if you can answer this question before reading any further.)

The answer is that my mother worked from what Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline calls a "mental model" in which women dance with men. Because of her mental model, she didn't even consider that Amy might be the person in question.

The Power of Mental Models

Mental models determine how we think and how we act. They even determine what we see. An inappropriate mental model could cause my mother to be unable to see what was staring her in the face.

As I started developing the ideas that became the foundation of Positive Coaching Alliance, I became convinced that training alone was not enough to transform the culture of youth sports. Just as my mother was blinded by her model of male–female relationships, a mental model of coaching that considers winning on the scoreboard to be the only goal blinds many well-meaning individuals to the incredible opportunities to use sports to build character and teach life lessons to young athletes.

A Positive Coach might recognize that a tough defeat is a teachable moment in which a lesson can be taught that simply can't be communicated after a win. A coach who thinks only about winning, on the other hand, will often totally miss the teaching opportunity because the only thing that really matters is the scoreboard.

The greatest training in the world will fall on deaf ears if youth coaches are operating out of the wrong mental model. And for the most part, they have been, which brings us to the villain.

The Villain

The opposite of Positive Coaching is not, as you might expect, negative coaching. Rather it is "win-at-all-cost" coaching, an unrelenting focus on winning without regard for the athletes or the game.

Competition and trying to win are not the villains in youth sports. The enemy, the source of negativity and virtually all problems in youth sports (and I realize this is a sweeping claim), is the win-at-all-cost mentality.

I remember the shock I felt when I first attended my son's games when he was 7. I was stunned at the unhappiness I saw: kids crying, parents yelling at officials, coaches berating players. I understand that my memories of the "Golden Sandlot Days" of youth sports may not be entirely accurate, but there is no question that things have deteriorated in youth sports. Consider the following:

• Officiating a youth sports game is becoming an increasingly risky job. Youth sports officials are under attack - literally. According to the National Association of Sports Officials (NASO), 150 assaults on officials were recorded in 2001 - up 400 percent from the 30 that were recorded 5 years earlier.
  
• NASO also reports that 76 percent of the 60 high school athletic associations surveyed said that many officials are quitting because of increased spectator interference.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Double-Goal Coach by Jim Thompson Copyright © 2003 by Jim Thompson
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.