Sports for Your Child

Unless your child is at an age where the score of the game isn’t tracked, winning counts and losing hurts.  The original quote was “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.”  I believed this for a long time, but as I found out in my first year of coaching, losing is not fun at all.  I would prefer if the quote went like this “It matters if you win and how you play the game.”

The funniest quote that I read on the subject was “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you place the blame” by Oscar Wilde.  I also read a witty comment that the person who originally said “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game” obviously lost a lot.

Getting back to my first year in coaching; my best friend at the time had a vision where kids could play to have fun whether they won or lost.  We went 1-7 and, believe me, when you see kids crying in the huddle you know they’re not having fun.  That was when I realized that if you want kids to have a lot of fun in sports you have to each them how to win.

You can’t go out on the field and play to win, either.  The best way to win is to work hard and smart and then focus on execution.  If you focus on winning only your eye is on the outcome, and not the moment.  The best teams are focused entirely on the ‘moment in time’ and that moment continually moves forward.  If players continually focus on the present, they can’t possibly beat themseleves up for making a bad play.  This is the best way to have a ’short memory’.

Work hard and smart, train diligently, focus on the moment and you stand a great chance of winning.

Happy July 4th weekend, everybody.

Rich Rosdal Coaches Corner, Parents Parlor, Player's Panacea focus, lose, moment, outcome, present, team, win

Many youth players don’t realize how the power of their minds can benefit them when it comes to sports.  Obviously, if the mind is focused, a player can achieve much more than when it isn’t.  Any player with ‘athletic ADD’ is going to have problems whether they are trying to hit a baseball/softball with a bat, catch a football, or score a goal in hockey, basketball, soccer or lacrosse.   Please note that I’m not referring to kids who have ADD, but kids who don’t focus when they’re playing sports.

As many East Indian gurus have told us there is a monkey in the back of the mind that is always trying to distract us.  A player must focus and refocus to stay in the present and prevent emotions from taking hold.

It is also true that both winning and losing can be mindsets.  To transition from a losing mindset to a winning mindset, the whole team has to be focused on every play.  It requires steadfast alignment of the collective thinking of the team that they can win.  They must stay focused throughout the game and think about the outcome after the game is over.  If players are focused on the outcome then they aren’t in the moment.

We’ve all seen teams with big leads lose games and that happens because the players aren’t thinking in the present.  This is true for all actions in life and it’s certainly easier said than done, but coaches and captains need to be aware of the power of the mind.

Rich Rosdal Coaches Corner, Parents Parlor, Player's Panacea baseball, basketball, focus, football, hockey, losing, mind, outcome, Power, present, soccer, softball, winning