Tis the season...

A Club Director from the east coast called this week for advice. He had two coaches on the same team that had basically “checked out.” They were coaching from the bleachers, just yelling, negative, berating their athletes. They had two weeks, four practices and two tournaments left but fewer and fewer players were showing up at practices. The team was disbanding before everyone’s eyes because of the behavior of the coaching staff.

This week, a close friend and coach found another job and was done with coaching. Even though she has a month left in her season, a season in which she was asked to coach one team and assist on another, she was fried. She was at a tournament almost every Saturday, 4 hours a night during practice nights and it had taken its toll. She was done with her coaching job in club and in high school.

Tis the season. Burnout, malaise, boredom for all. While some teams are competing for championships and medals, most teams are quietly slipping into the off season abyss.

As a coach, this can be the hardest part of the season. The same kids, same attitudes, same drills, same practice plans: it all adds up to, “NOT AGAIN!”

This dangerous month is most perilous for your athletes. Will they see you as either a coach who is still working to make practices efficient and productive or one who has punched the timecard and is just trying to get through these last few weeks?

If your son or daughter was on the team, how would you want your coach to behave?

If you are doing the same drills you have been doing all season, think of the idea of Bernstein’s “repetition without repetition.” How can you do this drill differently but get the same result that is engaging and fun for the team?

What skills can you introduce that will engage your team and push them out of their comfort zones?

What non-volleyball practice can you come up with that will be fun and engaging for them? Sitting volleyball? Basketball? Skills contests with prizes? Let your imagination run wild.

It’s easy to tell a coach to stay positive, stay engaged, engage your athletes. But a team that has struggled or hasn’t been very good all season might have the mentality of the Los Angeles Lakers this season after their disappointing campaign: let’s just END this!

But you still have the opportunity to hold value to one of John Kessel’s pillars of great coaching: Don’t be a child’s last coach!

You have a few weeks left. Push yourself to learn how to better teach a skill you aren’t comfortable with and teach your athletes. Find a smart, efficient game like drill you have never done before and try it. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t but you will never know unless you try.

You ask your athletes every day to give you their best, to work hard and be engaged. They might ask the same of us.