QuestionQUESTION: Dear Coach Houser,
I am currently on a club team in my last year. Yet my team has been having problems with our two coaches since the season started. I was wondering, where is the line between simply a tough coach and an abusive one? The two coaches I have yell, have accused me of losing a game for us, and now my coach is giving me the silent treatment and I'm not sure why. Two people have already quit (because of the stress and never being good enough), and I know of others who are seriously considering it. I dread going to practices, but I still love to play and I love my team, and we work hard for each other. I'm worried this could kill my love for playing now and in college. When is coaching abusive? And should I stick it out, or quit?
ANSWER: Good morning Mattie and welcome to www.allexperts.com.
Are you really a teenager? You type like a secretary! Congrats!
Your question is awesome! Each girl has a different definition of "coach abuse". One girl quit my team this spring, and I'm sure her parents think I abused her. But all I did was not let her play much. That's it. No cursing, no threatening, no ignoring her, etc. So, to her and her family, I was abusing her. huh. On the other extreme, I've seen girls who would put up with hollering, cursing, in-your-face coaches who I wouldn't let mow my grass or baby sit my pet!
I've written several articles about it. Here are two of them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ARTICLE #1: Coaches Who Scream At Kids: It抯 Idiotic! April 19, 2004
Coach Houser: I'm a parent of a 9th grade volleyball player. Is it normal for coaches to yell at kids? It makes no sense to me.
Answer: I have no patience with coaches who holler/scream/abuse children. I just got home from a tournament in Richmond, and there were 40-year old coaches hollering at 14 year olds. It抯 ridiculous! I don't understand why parents put up with it.
This is why I feel as I do:
a) Like many coaches, I'm a school teacher. For 25 years, I've been helping kids learn math. Hollering at them is something that i don't even consider. Why do other teachers choose to scream %26 holler? I have no clue.
b) I want to coach next year........and the next year. I want to coach until I don't want to coach any longer. If I abuse my kids, my job offers will dry up. For example, after taking this fall off to watch my stepdaughter play high school ball, I've had two interviews for next fall. If I had a reputation as an abuser, the interviews wouldn't have even occurred.
c) I want to win! But I won't win with a team of miserable kids, with a team of angry parents, with a principal who has to try to support my actions, with an A.D. who has to be at most of my games to witness my behavior, etc.
d) MOST IMPORTANTLY: I want my kids to like playing sports. I want them to have a good time. I want my kids to play the next year, the next year, and maybe even in college. Therefore, I try not to exhibit behaviors that prevent these events.
So acting like a hoodlum is NOT in any coach's best interest. In fact, it's idiotic. Screaming at my kids is as stupid as cursing my wife, back-talking a police offer, drinking %26 driving.............need I go on?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I wrote another article about why coaching girls is different that coaching boys.
ARTICLE #2: What Makes The Female Athlete Different #6:
Females don抰 mind being corrected or reminded. But be careful how you do it!!
You may be able to holler at your male athletes. But watch out hollering at females.
You may be able to get up in male athletes?faces. But I wouldn抰 recommend this with your females.
You may even be able to embarrass your male athletes in gym full of spectators. But I ask you to treat your female athletes a little differently.
If you accept that girls are sensitive, caring and want to do what抯 best for the team (#3 above), then why treat them worse than you treat your house pets. If you say, 揃ut I lose it sometimes,?then would you allow a teacher to deal with your child that way? Did your parents correct you this way? Really? Your parents screamed at you in front of your friends? Your parents embarrassed you in front of hundreds of people?
A parent emailed me a few months ago, 揝ports is the only venue where we allow our kids to be abused.? And she was right! It抯 amazing how much abuse parents and kids will allow coaches to dish out. But, on the other side of the coin, it抯 also justified when those coaches are lashed with criticism. If they抎 just had a better understanding of how to deal with their female athletes, then they抎 have had a much better time.
A school in our area has a softball coach who smiles, hugs, pats, encourages, congratulations and has them over to her house. The volleyball coach is a fusser, old-school, complainer, etc. Guess which coach has won 3 of the past 4 state championships? And guess which coach can hardly field a team?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't know if these help you out. But it tells you what feel. I just finished coaching a 15's club team. They LOVED practice and LOVED each other. We won some matches just b/c we are bonded as a team (coaches included), all striving for the same thing.
I believe that what brings a team together is right. What splits a team apart is wrong. If a coach is doing something that splits a team, then it's wrong. It may be making practice mandatory on prom night, not punishing the girl who's constantly late, playing a girl just b/c she attends a certain school, etc.
If you have more questions or some thoughts/feedbacks, you can follow up here or you can email me at
[email protected].
It's great to hear from you. I hope things get better. Please visit my team at www.coachhouser.com. I think you'll see happy kids and happy coaches!
Coach Houser
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Dear Coach Houser,
Thank you so much for your kind and informative answer! I am now convinced that my coaches are abusive. I think I will try and stick it out the rest of the season, as long as my teammates are still in it. Some of my teammates have said something, yet the coaches justify it by saying that this is the way division 1 volleyball will treat you.
On a side note, how do you feel about excess conditioning as a punishment?
AnswerHey Mattie!
Welcome back! :)
"Excessive" is another tough word to quantify. Is 2 laps excessive for everyone when the team doesn't cover their teammate at practice? No. Is 2 laps per player for each serve the team missed at the last tournament excessive? I think so, yes. Is 2 laps for not giving your best effort excessive? No, I guess not, but I wouldn't do it to a girl. Is 10 laps? Wow.
Some coaches punish, punish, punish. I'm sure when you take psychology in college, you'll read the pages on how punishment affects the individual. What you'll learn is that punishment often make the child angry and rebellious. It will sometimes make the child quit a sports team. There are probably a dozen ways to change an athlete's behavior. Physical punishment should be #11 or #12 on the list.
If I'm coaching a high school team, my team's punishment is called 10-100's. They're done after practice. Their sole purpose: To scare the kids into following rules. A girl gets one 10-100 per minute she's late to practice, 10 if she skips a practice, 1 for each hour that she's in internal suspension, etc. (A 10-100 is 10 laps around the basketball court and 100 lunges). But I tell my kids that I want to go through an entire season with ZERO 10-100's. And I'm serious. I don't want ANY! I will find other way to condition my players. I don't like to punish them and I know they don't like to be punished.
That's it. My teams have never done conditioning for missing serves or for losing. When I was younger, I'd holler the old, "RUN TWO!" for not giving enough effort. (If one my players from the 90's or 80's are reading this, they just had a flashback! haha) I take care of most issues by talking to my girls privately, by taking them out of drills, by reducing girls' playing time, etc. I try my absolute best not to embarrass my players. Why? B/c we're a team. Also b/c my players are females. Hollering, cursing, punishing with conditioning, etc. should be unnecessary 99% of the time when trying to motivate females. Like I said before: I don't want to disrupt my team. I don't want my team to take sides, some for me and some against me.
At the same time, I don't feel like I'm a wimp either. Every girl who's ever played for me will say, "If you let Coach down, he will talk to you in private and make you feel 2 inches tall. It's not fun. Just be on time, look out for the team before yourself, and give him maximum effort and he's a happy guy!" At the same time, I think they will say, "Don't ever make Coach Houser mad. If you EVER talk back to him, he'll explode!" But, Mattie, I get mad so seldom, it's pretty effective when I do! :) Even when I was 30 or 35 or 40, I would rarely holler/scream/curse because I knew that wasn't what motivated girls. And I like to win.
A young woman who's very close to me has been in an abusive situation for the past 2 years in college. Cursing, punishment, hollering, etc. It's been terrible. Do they win? Yes, they win most of the matches they should win; but, they NEVER upset a team that's a little better than they are. Never. Why? B/c they are not "a team". They don't bond. Their coach isn't working with them toward one common goal.
I try my best to do the opposite. I try to take care of my players, try to look after them, check on their grades, send them birthday cards......and guess what? I think we WIN games we shouldn't. Just last weekend at our region bid tournament, we beat the defending region champ 25-18, 25-18. We also took one game from the bid champ. We finished 2nd....and I'm in my first year with a new club. How did I do it? Yeah, I've got really good players, and they give me great effort; but, I think it's also b/c each girl has her own web page, they have team T's, they have team water bottles, they go to movies and meals together, we leave every venue together (even on our final day last Sunday), etc. I just put one birthday card in the mail yesterday......even though our season is over, there were 3 girls who didn't get birthday cards. So, at our final day together, I had cards for those three, and will mail them as their birthdays roll around.
I know that you didn't ask to read all this. And I'm 100% NOT saying I'm the best coach around Roanoke, Va, because I'm not. But......I try to do NOTHING to disrupt my team and will nearly do ANYTHING to bring them together. And my players and parents are expected to do the same.
OK, what else can I tell you? :) If I can do anything else, please contact me. My email address and website were in the earlier answer. Maybe this summer, you can come to one of my camps. I'll be in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and in Virginia a lot! :)
Chat soon!
Coach Houser
