Ep 363 What Is the Biggest Character Lesson You Are Trying to Teach Your Players This Season?

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Another question pulled from the Coaching Youth Hoops Facebook group: what is the biggest character lesson you are trying to teach your players this season?

Coach Collins and Coach Bill make the case that the life lessons taught through sports matter more than the sport itself, and that the whole thing falls apart if you don't connect the dots for the kids. They cover failure as a teacher, being on time as a stand in for responsibility, leaving the gym better than you found it, getting along with teammates you would never choose as friends, and why a difficult coach can be one of the more useful things that happens to a young athlete.

They also give coaches a practical season planning move: pick the three or four character lessons you intend to teach, then leave room for the ones the season hands you.

Coach Collins is direct about it: one of the reasons he coached as long as he did is that the life lessons taught through sports are more important than the sport. That belief has to come first, because everything else in this episode follows from it.

This is the phrase both coaches keep returning to. Kids do not automatically translate a tough practice, a benching, or a bad loss into a lesson about life. Somebody has to say it out loud and draw the line for them. Sports were built for character development, but the development only happens if the connection gets made.

Coach Collins uses his own son. He wanted to play college basketball, tried out more than once, came close, and did not make it. He almost certainly learned more from not making the team than he would have riding the bench on it. He went on to start a couple of businesses and travel abroad instead. Coach Collins adds his own first business failed badly and taught him plenty.

Athletes rarely see this while it is hap