Back twenty plus years ago when I was coaching it was at NCAA District Six cross country meet. The then coach at SMU was just screaming at his women’s team as they raced, in a mean, crazy sort of way. I though to my self “if only you could see yourself you would never do that.” The effectiveness of that behavior is another story.
Coaches are like the weather
I had a recently prominent coach yell at one of my female athletes until she was in tears. I generally got along with him, but it took all my self-restraint to avoid an assault charge on that occasion, and totally correlates with other descriptions of his behavior. He could turn into an immature bully at the drop of a hat. If he did this in a public arena with other people's athletes, I can only imagine what went on behind closed doors.
this makes sense wrote:
Memory Lane - you are prescient in pointing out that being a passive aggressive mess of frustration and despair is also out of line. And combined with a penchant for over-training, that sounds like a disaster.
I still find the notion of yelling and strange in the sport of track and field. I recall Bob Kennedy's description of winning his first NCAA championship as a freshman - where Sam Bell quietly but sternly reminded him to be both tough and patient around the 4 mile mark - a remark likely made effective by body language as much as what Bell actually said. That is the type of which is effective in track. The yelling never made me run any better, or train harder.
Yeah, it's a little odd, but I've seen certain coaches pull it off. I noticed those types yelled during workouts and races, but NEVER after the race was over. They would always shift into a more calm, supportive demeanor once the athlete stopped running.
malmo wrote:
"He'd let you know he was disappointed but that things would be okay," says Knight, adding their relationship has evolved with a shared appreciation of other sports and music. "He would never yell, belittle you or make you feel bad about yourself.
I must have run in an entirely different crowd than you guys. Throughout my career, going back to junior high, I've never had a coach who was "disappointed", or "yelled, belittled ...or made me feel bad about [myself]". Moreover, I've never heard of coaches from apposing teams (yes, all the way back to junior high) who acted in a similar manner.
Where the hell do you find those guys? How do they get coaching jobs in the first place?
I started switching from being a baseball/Am. football athlete to T&F and XC at age 14. Way too much yelling and screaming occurs Pop Warner Football. Usually an assistant defense coach going nuts for an athlete missing a gap assignment.
Huh... wrote:
I'm in my early 40s, went to high school and college in the 90s, and growing up, I didn't know of any coach who DIDN'T yell at (belittle?) athletes. If we screwed up or had a bad race, we expected to get yelled at. Somehow, none of us had emotional meltdowns.
I was talking to a co-worker recently about the fact that workers 10+ years younger than us can't seem to take any corrective feedback at all, no matter how constructive. We've seen young workers resign when they were corrected on something. I just don't get that.
Maybe it's because they never had coaches teach them the concept of authority.
I am over 50 and I never accepted authority that wasn't earned. I was a states finalist type athlete in a few sports in high school and I had one coach that was a dick. I told him he was a dick and quit.
I was a coach's pet for the rest of them because they treated me with respect and I gave it to them in return. We had some great successes together.
Now in the military, I followed chain of command because the entire operation is built on that. But whenever I was out of uniform, I gave no respect and took no crap from anyone who was an idiot, no matter what their rank.
Have some respect for yourself, don't just say "yes sir" because someone gave an idiot a clipboard and a whistle.
kfj;sdkfj;sldkfj wrote:
Huh... wrote:
I'm in my early 40s, went to high school and college in the 90s, and growing up, I didn't know of any coach who DIDN'T yell at (belittle?) athletes. If we screwed up or had a bad race, we expected to get yelled at. Somehow, none of us had emotional meltdowns.
I was talking to a co-worker recently about the fact that workers 10+ years younger than us can't seem to take any corrective feedback at all, no matter how constructive. We've seen young workers resign when they were corrected on something. I just don't get that.
Maybe it's because they never had coaches teach them the concept of authority.
I am over 50 and I never accepted authority that wasn't earned. I was a states finalist type athlete in a few sports in high school and I had one coach that was a dick. I told him he was a dick and quit.
I was a coach's pet for the rest of them because they treated me with respect and I gave it to them in return. We had some great successes together.
Now in the military, I followed chain of command because the entire operation is built on that. But whenever I was out of uniform, I gave no respect and took no crap from anyone who was an idiot, no matter what their rank.
Have some respect for yourself, don't just say "yes sir" because someone gave an idiot a clipboard and a whistle.
No, you were NOT a state finalist type athlete in a "few" sports in High School. Laughable!
malmo wrote:
Yelling at your athletes is NEVER encouraging or motivating. Great coaches don't yell at their athletes. The ones that do, are psychos and azzholes.
Tell that to Alex Ferguson, one of the most successfull coaches trough history.
back woods wrote:
malmo wrote:
All the way back to junior high, all of my prescient coaches knew that one day I'd become elite, therefore I ended up with even more prescient (and good) coaches? That's amazing!
But that doesn't reconcile with all of the other DC area coaches who never had athletes who went on to become elite, and yet all of them were great coaches too.
I'm confused. ;-)
The typical future world record holder stands out already in middle school. Most people never meet someone with that much talent at anything. Most schools never have had a 4 minute miler and when they do all sorts of special tjings happen. I'd imagine that most of your early coaches never saw anyone else, before or since, with so much talent. Being elite and having been around a lot of elites probably makes it harder to see how rare they are and how much that talent stands out.
I know one of male's high school coaches. I also knew some other high school coaches from the DC area in male's time there and coached briefly with one whose teams won so many Maryland state championships that you could hardly keep track of them. None of them belittled their athletes, criticized them in front of teammates, etc. Decades later I got to know and know of high school coaches, then college coaches, that my sons ran for and against and the same holds true. Very few of them have runners who show clear signs of being elite one day. In fact, the ONE coach I can think of who did scream at and belittle his athletes was a club coach who did have an elite athlete now and again.
Soccer. Xc, track and swimming.
Sorry your mind can’t comprehend such a thing.
Only a few times have wiser words been spoken on this forum. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.
my dad used to do this to me over soccer. tell me i wasn't trying hard enough, my mom was enabling me to not try hard (she never talked to me about soccer), that i was only focused on arguing with him, that I wasted the last x years of my life and his life (got up to 10 when I was 20 or so). He would say some ridiculous sh!t when he was mad too, like he'd keep saying "would you like fries with that?" to reference his idea that I would end up working at McDonalds (I have a PhD and work for the government), or "prestige worldwide" to reference the movie stepbrothers and that I would probably live at home for the rest of my life (I'm married at 25 and closing on a house). He rarely hit me but it was mostly psychological warfare. It was tough growing up like this with an unhinged person giving you direction in sports. I didn't realize until I moved out how bad it really was, and I'm still working through it. When I was in that environment, I was fueled on rage and anger (some of my best performances in soccer were when I was crying mad). Moving out and not having that stimulus was tough and I had to learn to compete fueled by other emotions instead.
But to answer your question OP I think that track does not really lend itself to this type of behaviour, but other sports certainly do.
Experience with age. Thank you for your post.
I really enjoyed your wisdom and hope many take the time to read what you have written.