Sports – Successfully Coaching Middle School Athletes
The main goal for a professional, collegiate, or even high school varsity coach is to win games. As one climbs higher in the coaching ranks, this goal becomes increasingly imperative. Professional coaches are not given much leeway and often fired quickly for not fielding competitive teams.
If you are coaching a middle school team, however, winning should not be your primary goal. Yes, it is nice when it happens and should not be intentionally avoided, but it should not be your basis for determining success. At this level, your primary concern is to develop a program and have an eye on the future. Keeping this in mind, there are several key areas in which to focus.
The main reason behind the widespread use of artificial turf these days is to keep maintenance costs at a minimum, to avoid the use of irrigation and to keep the grass as alive and green as it can be. With real grass exposed to heavy use such as spacious fields used for sports, there’s a big likelihood that they’ll get damaged easily and will require some time to grow them back to their original condition.
Teaching Rules and Skills
Beyond keeping the sport enjoyable for the athletes, it is also crucial to make sure your middle school team learns. Start out the first day with an overview of the sport. This is especially vital for a sport which is not quite mainstreamed, such as lacrosse or water polo. Even for the more popular sports, though, it is still important to provide insight into the big picture.
After your middle school athletes have a general understanding of the game, it is time to focus on individual skills. At this level, consider the very basics. Throwing and catching are important, rudimentary skills for a wide array of sports, such as football or baseball. Dribbling is one of the key fundamentals for basketball and should be developed at this stage. Skills like these might seem basic, but middle school athletes need to spend time working on them.
A great way to combine the large picture and the details is to allow your team to scrimmage, either intra-squad or with another local team. This will enable your middle school athletes to develop skills in real-game situations. As a bonus, scrimmaging goes a long way towards helping the children have fun, which is the primary objective for a middle school coach.
Developing Healthy Communication
At this level, there is no need to ever yell or berate an athlete for a mistake. If a middle school wide receiver drops the ball or goalie lets in a shot which costs the team the game, he or she is already going to be feeling down about the mistake as is. The last thing anyone needs is a coach yelling on top of the self-criticism.
In your role as coach, what you need to do instead is calmly explain why it happened (“You took your eyes off the ball.”), say what to do next time (“Look the ball all the way into your hands.”), and provide a little trust (“I know you will do it next time.”). If you handle mistakes like this, your team will develop confidence in you and be eager to go out there again.
From these analyses, it should be clear that the 79% figure is inflated due to a relatively easy non-conference home schedule. The 56% figure is a much more accurate indicator of home winning percentage because it was against teams of similar caliber within the conference
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