The other day I got an interesting question via email from a mom of a young travel volleyball player. Her daughter and her team had missed quite a few serves their previous tournament. There were serves into the net. There were serves wide of the court. There were serves over the endline. They were told…
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Dear Out of Control Sports Parent, You. Yeah, you. The one shouting “Get the rebound!!!” to your kid. The one with the heart palpitating so loudly that you cannot contain yourself. The one yelling and complaining about the coach. The one hollering at the 13-year-old referee. The one angry at my kid for making a…
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“The Fulham coaches distilled the threat, defined the tactics and dictated the tempo at which they expected their team to play. It was a tough European tournament, featuring Paris Saint-Germain, Monaco, Inter Milan, Bayern Munich, Anderlecht and Feyenoord, but it was deemed to be winnable.” So begins Chapter 2 of the great book No Hunger…
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Yes, it is that time of year again, time for our favorite books of 2018, and time to get the coaches, parents and athletes in our lives some good holiday reading material. The Changing the Game Project team is always reading, always listening, and always learning, in order to help you take your coaching, parenting,…
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“Where did we ever get the crazy idea that to get children to do better, first we have to make them feel worse?” – Jane Nelsen Early in my coaching career, I was speaking with a parent of an athlete about the methods employed by her daughter’s coach. The parent explained how the coach ruled…
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Picture the young swimmer stepping up to the starting blocks in a championship race. What is he thinking in that moment? Visualize the soccer player, stepping up to take the deciding penalty kick. What is going through her head? Think of the basketball player, standing on the free throw line needing to make two free…
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Dick Hoyt was not a runner in any sense of the word. By his own accounts, he could not remember the last time he had run more than a mile. So when his son Rick told him in the spring of 1977 that he wanted to participate in a 5-mile run to benefit a classmate…
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Have you ever heard of Blockbuster Video? Have you seen one lately? There is a reason only one Blockbuster store remains today. Let me explain. In 1992 I was a senior in High School playing for one of the top high school soccer teams in the state. We were successful because our coach was one…
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On May 29, 2018, University of Maryland lineman Jordan McNair ran the last sprint of his life. After a series of 110 yd runs, during which he became disoriented and had trouble standing, McNair collapsed and died of heat stroke. He had a body temperature of 106 degrees in the hospital. He was only 19.…
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“This season was a disaster.” A former colleague of mine said to me recently. “We had a ton of fun, the kids learned a lot of new skills and gelled as a team, but we didn’t win as many games as last season.” “Fun and learning are the two primary things we always wanted out…
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