Becoming a Successful Coach

by: Damanhuri @ OCM

As a coach and role model, you will affect the lives of your players.Through your approach to coaching, you will show your players how todeal with many of the challenges they will face in life.

Take Delight in Young People
Liking kids has to be a priority. Your primary reason for coachingshould be to help young people grow, mature and develop in tosuccessful, well rounded and respected adults. If course we all wantto win, but if winning is the only thing that counts, you'll neverhave the pride and satisfaction that comes from your players succeed at life.
You have to coach for the right reasons. You must focus on teachingyour players proper values. Important values to teach includediscipline, hard work, conquering fear and tension, having pride intheirselves and their teammates, establishing attainable goals, andmore importantly stiving to accomplish those goals.
Don't coach for the wrong reasons, such as boosting your ego orwanting to be in the limelight. Don't use your players to fan yourego because then they become pawns instead of people.

Organization
You won't be able to accomplish everything that you want toaccomplish if you don't have a concrete, workable plan. Everypractice is a race against time, don't waste a minute. Determine whatyou want to accomplish for each practice in order to obtain your teamgoals. Your assistants must understand your plan and how you want thefundementals to be taught. You must also listen to imput from yourassistants and be willing to take their suggestions underconsideration. This should be done before practice so that no time is wasted.

Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm is a necessity whether you are coaching baseball,basketball, soccer, softball or volleyball. The thought of workingwith your players should motivate you and get you excited about whatthey are accomplishing. You should treat every player as if they wereBabe Ruth or Michael Jordan and every practice as if it were the lastgame of the World Series.

Patience
The ability to go over things again and again, never losingenthusiasm, is a must for a great coach. Every great athlete had amentor who had the patience to teach the fundementals of the sport.One of the greatest experiences of coaching is to see the leasttalented suddenly blossom, all because you never gave up on theplayer. The player will not forget how they became successful andwill take the same values into their lives.

Persistence
It is difficult to differentiate between patience and persistence,they go hand in hand for a coach. You must persist and you must teachyour kids to persist. Persistence in simple words, is never givingup. Each of us has failed at times but what is more important thanfailure is what we do after we fail. The greatest thing about defeatis that it is a powerful learning tool.

Sincerity
You must be sincerely concerned about your players, first as humanbeings and second as players. Being concerned, listening as well asteaching and sharing decision making will empower you players to playtheir best. Sincerity and concern mean that the game and its outcomeare secondary to the people playing it.

Fairness
Being fair goes along with sincerity and concern. Everyone wants afair chance to so what they can do. They want an opportunity! Eachday a coach must re-evaluate personnel. Never discuss one of yourplayer's abilities with another player on the team. Make onlypositive comments during and after practice and games. Never singleout one player to praise. I try to keep a list during the game andwrite down as many positive things that a player has done that I canfind. After the game I will go through the list and state a couple ofthings that each play did that helped the team.

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