Coaches, if an athlete screws up, please try to follow this advice from Chris Fox and Justyn Knight on how to handle it

"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?

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?

Ditto. Most likely, I knew when I disappointed the team and was way harder on myself then any yelling by a coach would have done. But my coaches were also great people who knew how to handle the situation. Sorry, but your hero Fox isn't unique.

agreed. coaches that yell or scold at their athletes negatively are more of the exception, rather than the norm. just doesn't happen as often as you think. the internet, much like TV, has become a place of over-exaggeration of events

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?

Glad to hear someone else had the same experience as me.

Over the years some of the people that had the greatest influence on my life were my coaches. I think some of them have no idea how much good they can do for a young kid. Their influence goes so much beyond developing the athletic skills.

malmo wrote:

Moreover, I've never heard of coaches from apposing teams (yes, all the way back to junior high) who acted in a similar manner.

I remember running in a meet back in high school and the coach of the other team came over to congratulate me on my race.

All these years later I still remember his name and how he made me feel that day.

malmo wrote:

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?

Seriously?

When running for Mihaly Igloi I had been training well. I ran a race and underperformed my training a 14:35 3 mile. After the race he said “Reid, I don’t know what I did wrong, you should have run faster.” About six weeks later I dropped my time by over 30 seconds. Coach Igloi always took the responsibility if you did the work.

Igy

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?

Malmo I'm a bit surprised. I never had a coach who belittled or made me feel bad about myself. But for sure I've had a coach who yelled at us. Yelled can be encouraging or motivating. And I've seen tons of coaching yelling at runners on other teams.

I assumed more old school coaches yelled.

But disappointed? Coaches are going to be disappointed all the time with results including your college coach:

Disappointment is a natural human reaction.

Screen shot is from this article:

You’ve got to motivate em and get em fired up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5meLgJw6Po

One workout in college our pack came through a 400 2 seconds slow and our coach called us a bunch of pu**ies and that our rival school was warming up at that pace then the next rep he drove behind us on the gator saying if we dropped off we would be run over

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?

Malmo, I'm assuming you are under 45 years of age. If you played pee wee football, up to high school sports in the 60's 70's and 80's, it was expected to hear a coach, male or female yelling. And, they did it right in front of the parents. only rarely, did you ever hear a parent complaining about the coach. My wrestling coach jacked me up against the wall. So what?

I won't say which high school, but I ran for a very successful HS team in Texas. Our coach routinely told guys "you're a gutless dog, you're a coward" or my personal favorite "when that guy went around you with 300m to go your @sshole puckered up SO tight you couldn't pull a 20 penny nail outta there if you had a D9 Caterpillar" or maybe "If I looked up dumb@ss in the dictionary, I'd see a 5x4 photo of your face" He could really make you feel like a piece of crap.

When I left to run in college I was blown away after my first bad race when my new coach actually TALKED to me about the race and what happened instead of just getting in my face and ripping me a new @ss. It really helped me to find the love for the sport again, which my HS almost ruined. Glad I decided to stick it out and run in college. I had 2 amazing coaches, good men, that I still keep in touch with.

This squares with the Chris Fox I know - I ran against him beginning in high school. I talked to Tom Graves 10 years back, and he said there was no place he would rather send his son. I quickly agreed.

In a related vein, I have coached youth basketball when a father became ill in the middle of he season, stepping in. I didn't yell at the kids, but was direct with them. Some parents were disappointed I did not yell. I told them I didn't think it was effective, particularly at the middle school youth league level. I could tell I was not going to convince them. Coaching was a shock to me. Video games were the dominant thing in these boys lives, and you could tell - they were out of shape, especially when compared to my youth league days - where our objective was to run the other team off the court. Given this, playing man to man consistently was out of the question as these kids would get gassed in two minutes, unbelievably so. So we called a lot of zone, severely packed in tight and with lots of hopes and prayers the other team didn't have a dead eye three point shooter. This which usually worked because the other team was out of shape too. And I wasn't going to get these kids in shape with practice only once a week and their diet of Papa Johns pizza and soda all week. So zone it was, and I was direct with the kids and parents as to why. But again, some parents viewed me as soft - I mean - no yelling? - zone defense? - I was clearly an outlier. One of the thoughtful parents and I had a discussion, and I asked him about my no yelling approach. He thought it actually was the right thing to do with these middle to upper middle class kids, because if you get could in their heads they could work with you on the court. He also said that the parents who wanted yelling were also football parents, where yelling and screaming is a way of life. (I could never coach football). In any event, I think this kind of thing rarely works in track, and kudos for raising the Chris Fox article.

Any Cortland State Alumni wanna share stories about the coach's attitude? Maybe any of the 2005 D3 national champions can comment on the difference between Moran and Patrick?

Funny how just 30 min south you can have a completely different culture...

456 wrote:

Malmo, I'm assuming you are under 45 years of age. If you played pee wee football, up to high school sports in the 60's 70's and 80's, it was expected to hear a coach, male or female yelling. And, they did it right in front of the parents. only rarely, did you ever hear a parent complaining about the coach. My wrestling coach jacked me up against the wall. So what?

Malmo is George Malley - the former AR in the steeplechase. He is 63.

I never tell my athletes I'm disappointed at them, but sometimes I yell at them. Where does that put me?

I had a basketball coach in middle school who yelled at us full volume every practice and every game. One time we were doing wall-sits as part of pre-season conditioning and he told us if we dropped before 10min it meant we had a small....well you can guess.

But I'd take that any day over my college running experience. Coach hardly ever yelled, but he would get mad and super passive-aggressive if you raced poorly (which we often did because he trained us into the ground). He never took responsibility for a poor performance, even though the entire team was under-performing. His solution was always to blame us for not being "tough" enough and then make the training even harder. It became this vicious cycle of over-training, followed by disappointment, followed by more over-training. I'm talking hard 8mile tempos 2 days before important races. At the time I wasn't smart enough to realize what was going on, plus I'd been raised with the attitude that you just sucked it up and listened to the coach no matter what. It wasn't until shortly after I graduated that I realized how dumb the training was.

I thought the way Coach Steve Dolan handled the iHeps 3k a few years ago, when the seeded heat went out so slow that the top 2 finishers from the slower seeded 1st heat ended up winning the entire thing. Flotrack caught how Dolan handled it on video (see link below).

http://hepstrack.com/blog/2014/03/06/heps-sfx/

Of course Fox wouldn't handle it that way. That's Coach Bell's job.