This resource stems from a question submitted to the Ask PCA blog. Responses come from our experts including PCA Trainers, who lead live group workshops for coaches, parents, administrators and student-athletes.

"At lunch recently with some sports parents, I mentioned that I was a supporter of PCA. A couple of them were skeptical. They told me their kids had played on teams led by PCA-trained coaches, and they had never seen such badly behaved coaches, abusive to players and parents. Why does that happen and what can be done to improve the situation?"

PCA Response by Jim Thompson (@JimThompson18), PCA Founder
From the beginning, PCA has been about "unfreezing" coaches and refreezing them in new, better coaching behaviors. We discovered that training coaches wasn't enough. We quickly moved to a ""systems approach"" to work with leaders, coaches, parents and athletes so that the entire system reinforces the behaviors we'd like to see.

Let's consider four kinds of youth coaches.

1.) Members of this group embrace PCA methods and tools and quickly integrate them into the way they coach because Double-Goal Coaching is already part of their identity even if they didn't have the specific vocabulary down.

2.) The majority of coaches are well-meaning people who haven't developed a robust coaching philosophy and thus are susceptible to the pressures of a win-at-all-cost culture. They are inconsistent in their coaching and sometimes step over a line that they later regret (even if they publicly justify it when criticized).

3.) See more in the PDF below

Download a printable version of this resource, including additional commentary from PCA, by clicking the PDF below. To read more questions and answers like this, or to submit your own question to the Ask PCA blog, click here.