Development Zone®

   

PCA Resource Center

Coaching Players Who Are Upset About Playing Time

Share This Resource

This resource is from a case study in Jim Thompson’s (@JimThompson18) book, The Power of Double-Goal Coaching.

Playing Time Blues: You coach a competitive team in which playing time is not guaranteed but earned. You have players (and parents) who grumble about not getting to play as much as they’d like. As a Double-Goal Coach®, what can you do?

Let me say right off that good coaches get players into games. They may be creative about how to do it in high-stakes situations, but good coaches – Double-Goal Coaches – get kids into games.

Lack of playing time for their kids is probably the biggest source of frustration and anger among sports parents, so this is worth your attention as it can eat away at team solidarity. Save yourself a lot of grief by making your playing time policy clear before athletes join your team. Parents and players may still be unhappy about playing time decisions, but at least they will have been forewarned.

But having done that doesn’t get you off the hook for getting all your players into games. Kids love to play. They don’t like to sit on the bench. Most of the benefits of sports are tied to competing in games. Kids who sit benefit less from sports than kids who play. And lack of playing time is a big reason kids drop out of sports, which, to a Double-Goal Coach, is a tragedy.

To read the full response, including strategies for getting more kids into the game, download the book excerpt found below.

To purchase the entire book The Power of Double-Goal Coaching, and to learn more about other PCA books, click here.

These books are used in PCA’s live workshops. To learn more about our interactive coach workshops, click here.

Download the Excerpt

  • Type: PDF Document
  • Size: 214 KB
Download the PDF