Dear coaches,

I am terrified of my baseball coach.

In my last game of the season, when I hit a triple, the explosion of excitement and cheers from fans distracted me, which led to a running error. Luckily, I made it to third base. But when the inning ended with a strikeout, I knew what was coming; I imagined my coach bellowing at me “Do you even know how to play baseball?” Sure enough, his yelling echoed throughout the dugout as he criticized my baserunning. “Do you even know what you are doing out there?! It’s embarrassing that you are a starter and you still don’t know how to run the bases!” He stormed away without offering encouragement or advice to go along with the humiliation. I felt discouraged throughout the remainder of the game. Was it wrong to want some encouragement from my coach? Was I just being too sensitive?

A coach should lead his or her team to success by optimizing each player's strengths while also recognizing and addressing their weaknesses. A coach should strike a balance between serving as a role model and mentor to his or her athletes while setting high expectations for performance. Tom Crean, a college basketball coach for the University of Georgia, thinks a good professional coach should have emotional agility, or "the ability to harness [the players’] emotions and learn to apply them to the right people, in the right situations and during the right times." Crean’s philosophy seems to have informed Potsdam Royal’s head coach Randy Jackson’s shift in coaching style. When interviewed by The New York Times, Jackson described his old style as "demanding and confronting." He was, in other words, an abusive coach. But coaching the German football (soccer) team has given him a new perspective. Recognizing that his players have important commitments, such as their families, he decided neither the pitch nor the locker room was an appropriate place to punish them. In addition, he realized that it is okay for players to make mistakes, and that it is the coach's job to address these issues by providing guidance.

Crean and Jackson demonstrate that abusive coaching does not mean successful coaching. Former college swimmer and doctoral researcher Kait Simpson at the University of Edinburgh explains that the sports industry lacks an unambiguous understanding of what counts as abusive coaching, particularly when it is emotional rather than physical. As a result, it is up to the coaches to strike a balance between criticizing and abusive behavior.

And so, coaches, next time your players make a mistake show some restraint, some empathy, some criticism sandwiched between encouragement. Coach them with advice and support, instead of planting fear and doubt; this brings out the best in us players.

Sincerely, 

Yixuan

Works Cited 

forbes.com/sites/jasonbelzer/2015/10/21/indiana-hoosiers-basketball-and-the-education-of-a-college-coach/?sh=1c3f395ca9a3

nytimes.com/2022/09/08/sports/football/german-football-coaching.html?searchResultPosition=3

globalsportmatters.com/culture/2022/05/24/mental-health-battle-how-coach-impacts-college-athletes/