I’ve been blessed to have had a fun and competitive coaching career. My first year assisting with a men’s and women’s program, both teams made it to the NCAA tournament…for the first time in school history. School after school and place after place, I was fortunate enough to be able to turn around a bad team or keep a good team rolling.
More or less.
Because there have been those seasons when success eluded me. Those are frustrating times, but more powerfully, they are lonely times. Most folks are afraid to broach the subject of losing with a loser. So what’s a winner to do when she’s losing?
According to Psychology Today: fake it! In an interesting articled titled, You Become What You Pretend To Be, the author asserts that we have much control over our attitude about current situations…which then becomes a predictor of our future.
4 ways coaches can cope when things aren’t going according to plan
Our support system. As I said before, losing is frustrating, so we’ve got to have a plan to handle that negative energy. I’m not a yelling coach, so I don’t believe that emotionally unloading on my team is the appropriate course of action. My husband isn’t on the court losing games, so getting mad at him won’t make me feel better. But talking to other coaches should and does! Most coaches have been through bad stretches and can help us get through ours.
Our behavior influences attitude. The article that I referenced earlier had a study of two different groups of people. The first group received bad news, like “your grandma just passed away.” The other group was forced to hold their face in a sad position, with the corners of their mouths downturned. When surveyed afterward, the folks in both groups felt the same level of sadness. So the second group, even though they’d not received any bad news, felt a high level of sadness because that’s how they’d carried themselves. What does that tell us? We (coaches and players) have to figure out how to carry ourselves like winners…even when we’re not winning.
Our responsibility to the team. As much as we coaches hate losing, so do the players. They don’t want to text their friends and family with this solemn message: lost again. Our main responsibility to them is to make sure they know that the coaching staff will keep kicking butt in practice…no giving up. The next thing is to let each player explore the topic (of losing) with you, whether it’s in an individual meeting or on the bus to the next game…give them a voice. The final step is to raise everyone’s level of expectation and that can be done in many ways. Show them a pump up video, like Hoosiers; have alums write notes to current players; and quite simply, don’t accept a laissez faire attitude in practice.
Remember we’re winners. Much like “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”, what happens during a losing season, stays in the losing season. If we were winners before, then we’ll be winners again. Confidence that the world will right itself is key to maintaining our sanity.
Hopefully your ride on the losing train is a short one. Losing is lonely, but it doesn’t last forever.
