They care far more about how you make their kids feel and whether or not they can grow as people under your direction.
“Athletes & their parents don’t care how long you’ve been coaching or how much you know.
They care about how you make them feel and whether or not you have the ability to foster & maintain a growth oriented environment where they can develop mentally, physically, & emotionally.”
-Ray Zingler on X
“Ah, well you know he’s been doing it 20+ years, he’s got tenure!”
Who the hell the cares.
The amount of people who have been doing whatever it is they do, for a “long time” and are still bad at what they do is staggering.
Most people use the length of time they’ve been doing ‘x’ to justify subpar performance and are doing nothing more than hanging on for the ride, counting down the days to retirement.
The thought of “living” like this bends my soul, but it’s the way that many do because society has conditioned us to value not quality of impact, which is difficult to measure, but length of time, which is easier to measure.
Especially in the coaching realm.
I was speaking with a Students/Parents education lawyer on a flight recently and she put it to me like this (and she couldn’t be more correct):
“As much as people in the good ‘ol boy system can hang around and become lifers for no other reason than because they’re held lowly accountable and have stacked up years, athletes and parents don’t care about that.”
They see right through the façade and “protection” that many of these people, who don’t deserve access to the hearts and minds of our kids, have and often must train their kids to develop not with these people, but in spite of these people.
It’s a sad reality, but it’s rampant at every level and in every arena of coaching across the globe.
You know what kids and their parents (who have a big picture mindsets) care about?
It’s not stat columns or wins. Remember, it’s easy for a coach to look good when he or she has good personnel.
They care about how you make their children feel.
They care about whether or not you have the ability to foster and maintain a growth-oriented environment in which their kids can grow mentally, physically, & emotionally.
Most have no problem with their kids being challenged, but often it comes from the wrong place by people who don’t understand the essence and responsibility that comes with coaching youth, especially.
As a coach, are you making a point because you can or a difference because that’s your job?
I ask myself that every day.
