If you miss this, you miss the whole point.
“You know what’s a lot cooler than stripping a kid of their passion & running them into the ground?
Helping them enhance their passion & empowering them to eventually one day leave the game still loving it.
Your impact on them, positive or negative, has multi-generational consequences.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
If you haven’t been able to tell by now, coaching, training, and sports are extremely important to me.
They are important to me for the traditional reasons you’d think, but there are also bigger picture reasons as to why I care so much about what I do and the impact of what I do has on others.
See on the surface you have players and coaches.
The coaches tell the players what to do. The players do it or they don’t. There is good culture and there is bad culture. There are winning teams and there are losing teams.
Every 3-4 years a new “cycle” starts over.
The middle school kids move to high school, the high school kids move to college, and the college kids move to the professional world.
And it repeats. And repeats. And repeats.
If we as coaches are not conscious of the cyclical nature and fail to understand a) the depth of our + or – impact on the kids we come into contact with and forget b) we are one day not going to be coaching anymore, we miss the whole point.
These “damn teenagers” are judging us. They are paying attention to how we act. How we make them feel. And subconsciously speaking, the quality of our interactions with these kids largely influences how they will associate with the game as a whole.
This is a HUGE deal, because these “damn teenagers” are the next generation. They are going to become our leaders and coaches.
And guess who the biggest influence on their coaching style/philosophy (if you didn’t run them away from the game and they even entertain the idea of giving back to it) for better or for worse, is? US.
Yep, the impact we have on these kids is going to affect OUR own kids, and even their kids.
You don’t think about it in the moment, because “you’re too busy” and “have a lot going on.”
But those micro interactions you have (good or bad) can and undoubtedly will have multi-generational impact on training, sport, etc.
Be a catalyst for their love of the game. Strategically work to enhance their passion.
The quality of the next generations experience quite literally depend on it.
