Dear Athlete,

While you can have a healthy view of yourself, you may notice that the road can get a little bumpier when you step out to interact with other people.

Of course, whether you play a team sport or you compete individually, relationships pervade athletics. You may revel in the cheers you received from the team after a key move or time you hit, or you may remember the expressions of family or friends in the stands as they witnessed your accomplishment. You can’t help but remember a frustrating conversation with your coach; you might fight to ignore an opponent’s rude comment from the last competition. No matter what happens, your attitude toward the people around you will affect how they receive you, and how you build relationship with them.

Practice in relationships is much like practice for our bodies. Just as you may have to lift the extra weight on a day you feel weak or you have to sprint when you’d rather jog, so you may also need to serve your teammates more on days you feel selfish.

Maybe you wrestle with temptation to dump your day on your teammates or coaches. Your teammates and coaches have the same difficulty. Not all days go swimmingly, and we need to deal with that frustration somehow. Of course, athletics allow for a physical release of stress that is great for us, but we need to watch that any cause of stress does not change how well we treat people. Letting others know that you struggle is important; pushing others away from you and abusing them because you are struggling hurts you as much as it hurts them.

Here’s what I mean. If your team and your coaches encourage you and serve as a support system, then you had best both contribute to and take from the relationship. Think of a relationship like a pot, of soup, money, or something else. You have the opportunity to both give life and take life from the “pot” of any relationship. Asking someone for something or expecting something from them when you don’t know them may appear bold, or even rude. It becomes easier to repair broken relationships and ask for help carrying your own burdens when you have demonstrated that you care for someone else. A relationship can handle someone taking from it, so long as you’ve contributed something – trust, help, wisdom, joy – to the pot.

A relationship can handle someone taking from it, so long as you’ve contributed something – trust, help, wisdom, joy – to the pot.

Tweet

Let’s apply this thinking to your coach. When you start working with your coach at the start of each practice, coaches often outline their ideas and purposes for the practice. He or she might include things they’ve noticed that need work, drills they want to do, and how they’d like to wrap things up. Maybe your coach praises the team’s effort from practice or competition the previous day. Great coaches may also have conversations with you at the beginning and end of a season, outlining a vision and a list of specific goals for you. This habit achieves the same thing that pre-practice talks do, but on a bigger scale. (If your coach doesn’t do this for you, I’d suggest asking a coach to do so – it can help you gain perspective!)

When your coach does these things, your coach fosters relationship with you. By outlining expectations, the coach gives you “inside information,” as it were, and sets clear lines for measuring success that day. Believe it or not, clear expectations for a team can help them become more efficient. When we have goals in mind, and when we receive criticism and know how we need to improve, we can move forward with a stronger sense of direction and purpose.

If a coach includes critique about things done poorly or praise about things done well in the past, then that coach is also practicing honesty with you and acknowledging your work, which builds trust. If a coach tells you what you’re doing right without any critique, then you’re not getting the whole picture! Further, if the coach is also telling you what to do differently to make you better, this is an act of service to you.

Do you see how these tasks reveal care for you? Outlining expectations, making a practice plan, and sharing what a team needs to do to improve are regular tasks that coaches do that require time, energy, and forethought. In a few short minutes at the start of your practice, your coach has laid a foundation for trust and understanding for you to work together that day.

Sadly, I can’t say that all coaches and teammates have your best interests at heart. I’d like to think that it’s true, that every coach who steps onto the field or court or floor with their team comes with 100% of their energy and attention directed to serving their team. Many coaches do, a lot of the time! Unfortunately, coaches are also imperfect people. Even in the best of circumstances and with the best of intentions, coaches will make mistakes. If you have a strong relationship in place, then you can feel more comfortable talking with them about your concerns, receiving apologies from them, or apologizing to them yourself.

Relationships are messy things, and while we might prefer an image of sports that is clean, objective, and a relief from the drama of life, the best moments and memories often come from the time shared with the messy teammates and coaches we love. Winning is fun, yes, but it is more fun when we trust our teammates to do their jobs as they allow us to do ours. We feel more free to do our best when we trust our leadership. We have more fun when we are invested in the well-being of other people, pushing them to be the best they can be.

I can’t promise how anyone else will treat you. You may treat people with respect and kindness, but you must also remember that kindness isn’t a formula or ATM machine; you don’t get guaranteed results because you hit the right buttons. At the same time, we can remember that kindness and respect generally give us better results. After all, you’ve seen the teammates who cuss others out, the coaches who call the referees or their players names, and the parents who shout embarrassing things at uncomfortable moments. Do you want any part of that team atmosphere? Do you want others to remember the discouraging things you said, or the encouraging things?

You may treat people with respect and kindness, but you must also remember that kindness isn’t a formula or ATM machine; you don’t get guaranteed results because you hit the right buttons.

Tweet

You have a choice, not in how others treat you, but in how you treat them. Much of life may fall outside your control, but you can build a reputation for yourself of a trustworthy and honorable person. Oddly, the more we practice this toward others, the more others feel challenged, or free, to do so themselves.

How can you build trust today?

What do you wish others would do for you, to encourage you in difficult work? Go do that thing for someone else today.

Cheering for you,

Coach Bekah