Psychological Variables Of Coaching In Sports

8 Pages 2070 Words

The Psychological Variables of Coaching in Sports
I have been playing baseball all my life. I went to Holy Ghost Prep High School, and played on the varsity baseball team my junior and senior years, starting at third base and I also was our team’s closing pitcher. As a junior, my team had an incredible amount of talent. Four of our seniors went on to play division one baseball. Throughout the year, however, we experienced many obstacles, most stemming from player-coaching relationships. The players constantly ripped our head coach, and never bought into what he preached. Nonetheless, we ended up winning our division (which was not a big accomplishment) and were picked to win the district tournament and maybe even win the state tournament as well. However, we lost in the first round to an inferior team, because, I believe, of the team’s inability to get along with our head coach.
During my senior year, we had only one player who would play division one baseball; we were made up of a bunch of average role players who mostly played on junior varsity the year before. Although our third basemen was a stud (being me), we were not even picked to win our division, let alone do anything in the district tournament. Since, unlike the previous year’s team, we bought into our coaches’ philosophy, and we ended up beating three top-quality teams, and ended up reaching the district finals. Thus, in my presentation, I will explore the question of how much exactly does coaching play a role in a team’s success, and the other psychological factors that encompass the role of a coach.
The best examples to prove that coaching is indeed an important instrument to a team’s success, perhaps even greater than the talent of the team, are the instances of a coach coming to a good team and making them great, or a coach coming to a bad team and making them contenders. Perhaps the greatest example of this is of Phil Jackson coming to t...