S4 Ep9: Your Coach Isn't A Vending Machine

There's a version of the young coach in your kid's gym that you've already written off. You clocked the age, the thin résumé, the decision you'd never have made, and you decided. Before a single practice, sometimes.

I coached club at 21. I got handed a team I was never supposed to run, didn't know brackets, missed things a seasoned coach never would. The only reason I lasted long enough to coach a Division I national championship is that the parents on that first team gave me room to be bad before I got good.

So this episode is about the double standard nobody says out loud: we hand our own kids grace for every misread and missed rep, and we hand the young coach a verdict. One bad call becomes a group-chat pile-on. And it works. Good coaches leave, because DoorDash pays the same with none of the weekends and none of the personal attacks.

I'm not telling you to ignore harm. I'm telling you there's a line between a coach who's learning and a coach who's hurting your kid, and most of what sets us off lives nowhere near it.

Transcript

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Welcome And A Deeper Invite

Dr. Jen Fry 0:07

What's actually happening inside of you on that sideline, in that comment, and in that creature. No shaming, no finger pointing. Just real conversation. And if you want to go deeper, my new book, Before You Play the Coach, is available now. So let's go.

How I Became A Head Coach

Dr. Jen Fry 0:25

Story time. So I got into coaching club volleyball because I was at Montevello and then my head coach, CJ, was like, hey, do you want to make some extra money? And coach club. Mind you, I came from Yuma, Arizona. I think I played club volleyball maybe my junior year, definitely my senior year. Small regional team. We didn't go to any of these big qualifiers. I actually didn't learn about these big qualifiers until I was a college coach. Never had a clue. I'm I think my mom probably is thanking the Lord because baby, the way I would have bought every single thing in there, oh, I would have taken all her money. And so I became the first, it was supposed to be just the assistant coach for a 15-fours team. And my head coach came to one practice and then never came back ever. And I ended up being the head coach of a 15-force team. I had never even thought about being a coach. I didn't think about what I had to do to be a coach. Like none of that. I just became a head coach of this team. And I will always thank those young ladies and those parents for the grace that they gave me as a young coach who had no clue about what I was doing, about how to be a leader. Yeah, I didn't know about brackets, I didn't know anything. And they gave me so much grace that allowed me to keep developing, to then have a 15-year career coaching, to coach in a Division I national championship, to coach All Americans, future Olympians, all of that. I would have never gone on to do that had I not gotten the grace that I had as a young coach. Because I made mistakes. I didn't realize I think there was a crossover once, and we were all chilling, and then one coach one one parent happened to look and realized like we were supposed to be playing in ten minutes. So I did big mistakes and they gave me grace.

Why Young Coaches Need Grace

Dr. Jen Fry 2:30

And the thing I wanted to talk about was giving grace to these coaches. And I'm not saying that we excuse bad behavior, I am not saying that we excuse mistreatment, but the way some of these young coaches are are treated will make them get out of the coaching pipeline really quickly. I want you to understand we don't get the excellent coaches without having the young coaches that make a mistake. The excellent coaches that you want to be co you want your athlete to be coached by were the young coaches that made mistakes and god grace. And we will not be able to have a coaching pipeline if any mistake these coaches make. Parents are going after them, they're putting you know, these big posts in chats where these parents or these coaches know exactly who's being talked about if they're being contacted through text message, email, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, all of this because a a coach doesn't like a decision. If we have it where one parent is upset so they get other parents to gang up on this coach, we are going to lose really, really good coaches.

Hard Coaching Versus Harm

Dr. Jen Fry 4:00

And I think it's a good opportunity to be able to say where's the line, what do abuse look like? What does hard coaching look like? And where does it look like that these are just mistakes from learning of being in a position of power, of having to make lineups, of having to make decisions, of having to figure out which athletes can handle pressure, which athletes can't, when should I pull an athlete, when should I not pull an athlete? When do I call a timeout? When do I not call a timeout? All of those things are learned skills. And if you don't give time and space for that learning to happen, we're not gonna get those excellent coaches that are the ones that know the game, know strategy, know how to do user timeouts, know how to have players sub in and out, know the nuances and intricacies of the game. We're not gonna have any of those coaches. I was talking to the current Michigan State head coach. I was interviewing her and the former head volleyball coach, and the current one had went to Nebraska and was a club coach for a juniors program. And she said that being that head coach was instrumental in helping developer for her head coaching role in the Big Ten. Why? Because she had to learn how to do roster management, she had to learn how to manage subs, she had to learn how to figure out players, she had to learn how to do strategy, she had to learn how to put lineups in, she had to learn all of those things that help developer for her Big Ten head coaching job.

Keeping The Coaching Pipeline Alive

Dr. Jen Fry 5:45

And so I say that to say that I understand in some ways you want perfection from these head coaches because they're coaching your kids. You have put a lot of money into it. I get all of those things, and we need to have some grace for some young coaches, some 18, 19, 20, 21, 22-year-old head coaches or assistant coaches because they're the ones who are the future of this sport. We have coaches leaving at a rapid rate. And if we make it really hard for young coaches to learn, we're not gonna be able to have coaches coaching your kids, and we're not gonna have the coaches that are phenomenal because they will leave because it's gotten too hard for them, and they're not being paid enough. Because to be honest, they can go make money door dashing, they can go make money Ubering and not have the responsibility, not have the long weekends. They can heck just go do lessons. They can just go do a few lessons a week and probably make the same amount of money. So I'm not asking you to ignore abuse, but what I am asking you is to give grace because everyone's learning together. You're learning together, your athletes are learning together, these coaches are learning, everyone's learning, especially at some of the lower levels. Everyone's learning. And the better we can help that, the better we keep this pipeline strong.

Closing And Next Steps

Dr. Jen Fry 7:15

Friends, I hope this episode helped you. If it did, please like, follow, and share it with another sport parent, coach, or athlete. If you're ready to go deeper, please order my book before you blame the coach. Head over to my website, jennifertukusports.com or Amazon. And if your team, club, or organization wants to build stronger complex skills for parents, coaches, administrators, and athletes, let's connect. I'm Dr. Jennifer Five, and I'll see you next time on Five with Friday.