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I once eliminated the postgame meeting in high school and all the girls got really worried. If you win, they think the coach doesn't want to celebrate and enjoy the win. If you lose and eliminate the meeting, they think you gave up on them. So now I have the meetings and almost always keep them positive unless I need to deliver a specific team message.
Here is a related question: When do you correct as a coach? The consensus is that it can't be during the game, as the games are supposed to be for the players and any correcting during the game will be seen as a negative. The consensus is we can't do it in postgame, as that's supposed to be a positive meeting. The consensus is that we have to do it individually, since we have to "praise in public, correct in private." And of course in practice we want to make sure we are getting in plenty of reps and we might not practice for 2-3 days after a set of games ends, thus drastically reducing the immediacy of any corrections and probably their effectiveness.
So, when do we correct and how do we do it? If it's always individually, we are teaching just one person the lesson instead of the entire team, which seems to me a like a waste of resources.
One story: This past season we started 1-7 (although the win did come over Linfield, the eventual national runner-up) and then lost our first two games on our Spring Break trip to move to 1-9. We didn't play well in those two losses and I let them team know I didn't think enough players cared enough. I told them, in no uncertain terms, that there wasn't enough individual investment into the team, which was my fault, but that we need to get it corrected starting right now. We had one more game that day (in hot Tucson), so I let them go to lunch and told them while they were all enjoying their lunch and laughing and having fun, I would be at the field, unable to eat, utterly miserable and spending the two hours until our next warmup trying to figure out how we can start winning games. This was also true, I wasn't lying.
The purpose was not to make the players feel guilty. I want my players to have no doubt that their coach cares deeply about winning and losing and playing our best. If we aren't fully invested in the team and aren't playing our best and are paying the price for it on the scoreboard, I am not going to pretend to be pleased. One thing I am pretty sure I have found over the past 15 years of coaching is that the girls need to know what we are doing is important. How we play is important, how we work at the game is important and the win-loss record (after a certain age) is important. If they sense the coach is always happy-go-lucky and always pleased no matter what and everything is always "ok", then they get bored and wonder why the game is no longer fun. They get "burned out." They aren't really burned out, they are just bored because they sense that what they are doing is not important and not competitive. I believe the players sometimes need to see some fire from the head coach, at the risk of the coach being seen as negative. I usually pull this out once per season. Done too much and it's a disaster. But even at the college level, they are still kids in some fashion and kids need to know at times that they need to get their butt in gear.
We managed to win our remaining seven games in Arizona and won 19 of our last 28 games. Did that speech cause the winning? No. It doesn't work that way. If it were that simple, winning would be easy. The speech was just to let the players know I was worried we were getting complacent and we didn't work since last September to come out and accept a poor season.
Here is a related question: When do you correct as a coach? The consensus is that it can't be during the game, as the games are supposed to be for the players and any correcting during the game will be seen as a negative. The consensus is we can't do it in postgame, as that's supposed to be a positive meeting. The consensus is that we have to do it individually, since we have to "praise in public, correct in private." And of course in practice we want to make sure we are getting in plenty of reps and we might not practice for 2-3 days after a set of games ends, thus drastically reducing the immediacy of any corrections and probably their effectiveness.
So, when do we correct and how do we do it? If it's always individually, we are teaching just one person the lesson instead of the entire team, which seems to me a like a waste of resources.
One story: This past season we started 1-7 (although the win did come over Linfield, the eventual national runner-up) and then lost our first two games on our Spring Break trip to move to 1-9. We didn't play well in those two losses and I let them team know I didn't think enough players cared enough. I told them, in no uncertain terms, that there wasn't enough individual investment into the team, which was my fault, but that we need to get it corrected starting right now. We had one more game that day (in hot Tucson), so I let them go to lunch and told them while they were all enjoying their lunch and laughing and having fun, I would be at the field, unable to eat, utterly miserable and spending the two hours until our next warmup trying to figure out how we can start winning games. This was also true, I wasn't lying.
The purpose was not to make the players feel guilty. I want my players to have no doubt that their coach cares deeply about winning and losing and playing our best. If we aren't fully invested in the team and aren't playing our best and are paying the price for it on the scoreboard, I am not going to pretend to be pleased. One thing I am pretty sure I have found over the past 15 years of coaching is that the girls need to know what we are doing is important. How we play is important, how we work at the game is important and the win-loss record (after a certain age) is important. If they sense the coach is always happy-go-lucky and always pleased no matter what and everything is always "ok", then they get bored and wonder why the game is no longer fun. They get "burned out." They aren't really burned out, they are just bored because they sense that what they are doing is not important and not competitive. I believe the players sometimes need to see some fire from the head coach, at the risk of the coach being seen as negative. I usually pull this out once per season. Done too much and it's a disaster. But even at the college level, they are still kids in some fashion and kids need to know at times that they need to get their butt in gear.
We managed to win our remaining seven games in Arizona and won 19 of our last 28 games. Did that speech cause the winning? No. It doesn't work that way. If it were that simple, winning would be easy. The speech was just to let the players know I was worried we were getting complacent and we didn't work since last September to come out and accept a poor season.
