Dealing with the Outside Noise: A Coach’s Guide

Handling Outside Pressures

Coaching is a unique profession in that we face many internal pressures, such as keeping our team academically eligible, maintaining players’ physical health, ensuring mental focus, and, ultimately, winning games. I’ve always said that no one can put more pressure on a coach to win than the coach himself.

However, outside pressures are very real and can deteriorate both a coach and a team very quickly. These “outside” pressures may not directly concern your team, but they impact it greatly. A wise coach will be aware of these external pressures, manage them as needed, and avoid letting them become “internal pressures.” Here are three outside pressures that must be handled carefully:

Parents:

Let’s get one thing straight: parents love their kids more than any other kid and often turn into a special kind of crazy when it comes to their child. I said it. It’s true. Their kid deserves to be a starter, play more, get more shots, or whatever it may be… because, well, it’s THEIR kid. If that were all a coach had to deal with in terms of parents, it would be enough. However, most parents also seem to be experts at coaching. “I’ve coached this group since they were 6 in Little Dribblers and know exactly how to win with them…” So, they proceed to question every move you make as a coach, usually loud enough for the entire gym to hear. No other profession faces this! Do you ever heckle the plumber as he fixes your drain? Do you critique your dentist as he does your root canal?

My most successful approach to parent interference is to communicate directly, clearly, and often with the truth. Be honest. Call everything what it is, but do so with love and respect. Parents want to feel involved in their kid’s athletics, but they also need to understand the boundaries and their role. A coach can set these boundaries firmly, yet still maintain a friendly demeanor. Parents actually respond well to this. Ignoring or arguing with them, however, will only escalate the situation. Parents need to know you love their child, are working hard to make them successful, and are trained and experienced to do so. But ultimately, you are the one hired to make the decisions and do the job. Ask them to respect and honor that. I’d rather lay everything out on the table for everyone to deal with than have different versions of the story being passed around at every dinner table in my players’ households.

Fans:

It is interesting that, in America, over the last 20 years or so, spectators have adopted the belief that purchasing a ticket grants them the right to say and do anything they want. They yell at referees, coaches, players… and even at each other.

This external pressure can intimidate and affect coaches who are not prepared for it. My best advice is to work closely with administration to handle unruly fans. The truth is, amateur sports have no place for this behavior. I would argue the same for professional sports, but at least they get paid to deal with it. Having a plan in place with administration before the season is crucial in dealing with unruly fans. Let the plan and administrators handle it. Your job is to coach.

Media:

Sports writers and journalists have one job: get people to watch or read their content. How they do that is often through highly positive or highly negative content. No one’s interested in the middle ground.

I remember my mentor telling me, “You’re never as good as they say when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.” That stuck with me for 30 years of winning and losing. With the media, coaches need to treat them like a campfire: stay close enough to benefit from the warmth, but not too close to burn your boots.

Promote your kids and team, and thank the media for covering them. Be careful to avoid discussing team personalities, frustrations, or struggles. Don’t get too cozy with praise from articles or rankings… it will burn you every time. Remember, the media is simply an opinion with a voice. They don’t help you win, but they can certainly help you lose. Don’t give opposing teams bulletin board material through your media comments. Never make negative statements about opponents.

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There are plenty of internal pressures to worry about as a coach—why take on extra pressures from outside? External pressures can be very detrimental to your team (and your mental health) if you allow them to. But a wise coach will have a strategy in place to ensure that the outside noise doesn’t matter. They will say what they’re going to say, but you can only control what you can control. Coach your team, and let the outside voices yell at each other and spout whatever they may—because the voices inside your team are all that matter. They will speak the loudest.