When Our Athletes Don't Respond

College coaching can be exhausting.

Around 8 pm, I had still not received a food list from the team. As part of their job for meals before tournaments and games, they are charged with sending a list for coaches to be able to work off of. I got up from the couch I had wanted to fall asleep on and watched my children walk up the stairs without me to go to bed. I knew I was going to have miss bedtime in order to go shop for team breakfast food. It’s not as if I could have just not shopped to “teach a valuable lesson” about responsibility. Those days are gone and most of the tougher lessons that include not rescuing those who need the lessons most are branded as abuse or bullying, so not shopping was not an option.

The next morning I got up as always at 3:45 am to make the drive in for our 530 am bus load to our tournament which would last from 9 am until 5 pm in the bitter cold.

As I entered the building, there were faces plastered to phones laying down in the hallway with almost no one tending to the usual tasks for pre-boarding of the bus and equipment check. I verbalized a reminder that we needed ice and the food loaded onto the bus. As a few athletes followed I reminded them that they would need pack cutlery for breakfast and was met by silence.

As we exited the parking lot at 6 am, I looked over at my assistant coach and sighed at the fact that we had been on so many road trips and yet there was still such a lag in ownership and initiative to take care of the team by the team. We arrived at the venue only to find that the package of bottled waters were the only waters that got packed with no travel water bottles and no utensils for our meals that day.

At the close of the tournament we had a brief chat to wrap up the day on what we learned in competition which moved into a question to the group on how we can take more care and responsibility for the program. I inquired about how we could offer more gratitude instead of just expecting tasks to be completed by someone else.

My carefully crafted and genuine message was met with pure silence and lots of staring. Of course this wasn’t the first time I had gotten the stare back that heavily resembled a parliament of wide-eyed owls, but this time was particularly frustrating and I know I am not alone in this.

I sat down to give this topic some more thought. As a result, this became the perfect opportunity to record Episode 1 of Season 3 of the Fearless Coach Podcast. Give it a listen, let me know what you think.

Be Fearless.