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USA Cheer has partnered with TrueSport, to provide new educational tools to equip coaches, parents and young athletes with the resources to build life skills and core values for success in sports and in life. TrueSport, a movement by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, inspires athletes, coaches, parents, and administrators to change the culture of youth sport through active engagement and thoughtful curriculum based on cornerstone lessons of sportsmanship, character-building, and clean and healthy performance, while also creating leaders across communities through sport.
Coaches: How to Give Respect to Get Respect from Your Team
As a coach, you likely have certain assumptions around receiving respect from your athletes. However, when was the last time you really considered what respect means to youโand how your athletes define it? Respectful behaviors might seem obvious to you, but often, what you consider signs of respect are things that athletes simply havenโt learned or donโt understand.
Here, board-certified family physician and TrueSport Expert Deborah Gilboa, MD, explains how coaches can better model and teach respect to their athletes in order to help the athletes grow and mature.
Donโt Expect Respect for Nothing
The first thing Gilboa stresses when talking to coaches and other adults about respect is that respect isnโt something that should be automatically owed to you. “A lot of people think, โKids just owe me respect,โโ Gilboa says. โBut when I give talks about respect, Iโll often ask someone, โMay I please have $1,000 in cash?โ And they smile and laugh, and they say, โNo, I donโt have that.โ And Iโll respond, โPart of being here is that you need to be able to give me $1,000 cash, and you should just know that without being told.โ And thatโs exactly what youโre doing when youโre demanding some behavior from young athletes without earning it, and without explaining what behaviors are respectful.โ
Donโt Expect Students to Understand the โRules of Respectโ
You may think โrespectโ is an obvious behavior that everyone understands. But as Gilboaโs example above points out, not everyone has been told โthe rules.โ Itโs often assumed that parents have taught their children how to be respectful, but thatโs not always the case, and different cultures may even have different connotations around the word โrespect.โ Adults tend to assume that student-athletes inherently understand what โbeing respectfulโ meansโand that puts many young athletes at a disadvantage. โThere are many people who would respond to the request for $1,000 by saying, โI’ve never had $1,000 in cash, and I don’t come from a world where I would just happen to have $1,000 dollars in my pocket,โโ Gilboa adds. โSome kids don’t come from a world where they just happen to know what respect looks like and can easily give it to someone. We have to start by giving it to them and helping them learn what respect looks like, rather than demanding it from them.โ
Modeling Respect Earns You Respect
The golden ruleโdo unto others as you would have them do unto youโapplies here. If you want athletes to respect you, you need to treat them with the respect you want for yourself, says Gilboa. This may be a perspective shift for you as a coach, but modeling respect by giving it to the athletes is the fastest way for them to learn how to show respect back. โRather than expecting people to guess what feels respectful to you, modeling it is the most effective way to show it,โ says Gilboa. โIf you want your team to address you as Mr. Smith or Coach Smith, you could choose to model that behavior by referring to the athletes as Mr. Xโusing the appropriate pronouns, of course. The athletes will never forget that you treated them with respect by using their honorific and their last name rather than a nickname or just their last night. This is a simple way to teach the lesson rather than nagging them to call you a certain name.โ
Your Bad Behavior is Even More Noticeable
“You have to practice what you preach, or you are teaching something else,โ says Gilboa. If you demand that students show up to practice on time but youโre usually several minutes late, youโre teaching them that punctuality isnโt actually important. Similarly, if youโre telling athletes to be sportsmanlike to the team theyโre competing against but youโre yelling at the referee, youโre not modeling the respect youโre telling them is necessary.
Set Clear Expectations
While respect seems like a quality that athletes should just โknow,โ your athletes will be better served if you lay out your expectations around respect in a clear set of rules, with a defined set of consequences, says Gilboa. If you consider being punctual to practice a sign of respect, make being on time a rule for the team and have a consequence if an athlete is late. The important part here, though, is sticking to the consequences, even if it means benching your star player. โAthletes need clear expectations and reliable consequences,โ says Gilboa. “Reliable consequences mean that no matter who you are on the team, the consequences for not living up to those expectations still apply.โ
Takeaway
In order to receive respect from your team, you need to lay out clear expectations and reliable consequences around respectful behaviors. Make sure youโre modeling these behaviors and ensure that all teammates face the same consequences when they donโt model those same behaviors.
The TrueSport Champion Network is a community of coaches, parents, program directors, and athletes who believe in the power of youth sport to build life skills and core values for success both on and off the field. Join TrueSport Champion Network to help promote the positive values of cheer, dance, and STUNT!
The TrueSport Coaching Education Program empowers coachesโthe most significant influencers in young athletesโ livesโwith a transformative learning opportunity to obtain the knowledge and resources to cultivate, champion, and uphold the rich promise and highest potential of sport.
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USA Cheer is proud to partner with USADAโsย TrueSportยฎย to bring relevant educational content to the Cheer and STUNT community in order to promote a positive youth sport experience. We are excited to provide access to TrueSportโs experts that take coaching beyond skills and help truly develop the overall athlete by building life skills and core values for success on and off the mat, sideline, field, and court.
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About TrueSport
TrueSportยฎ, a movement powered by the experience and values of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, champions the positive values and life lessons learned through youth sport. TrueSport inspires athletes, coaches, parents, and administrators to change the culture of youth sport through active engagement and thoughtful curriculum based on cornerstone lessons of sportsmanship, character-building, and clean and healthy performance, while also creating leaders across communities through sport.
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