How coaching can affect mental health.

A big part of mental health in sports is the coaching. Coaches are meant to be more than just coaches. If you are considering becoming a sports coach, you need to be sure that you are 100% ready. You need to be able to deal with physical and emotional problems as well as being a role model for your athletes. One thing that coaches and sports can teach young kids is life lessons and in order to be a great coach, you need to be able to teach kids these lessons and help them get through tough times.

Most people think of coaches as people who will teach you the skills of the game. A coach with talented players that cannot create a gameplan or create a connection with his players will never have a great team or be a great coach. That is because being able to teach skills is the bare minimum that a coach has to do. Great coaches will tend to their player needs, but, when their duties are not carried out correctly, “scholastic sport can lead to negative outcomes such as stress, burnout, lost motivation, increased alcohol use, negative peer interactions, and lower morality” (Gould, Daniel). Coaches need to help their players through tough times in life and sport. They need to build up their confidence and support them. A coach who doesn’t do this will lose a player’s respect and effort. I have seen this from personal experience as well. When I played baseball, me and one of my good friends both played catcher. My friend worked his tail off every day just for the coach to tell him that he was not as good as me and that until he improved, he would not get much playing time. My friend worked and improved every day, but the coach would never give him credit and always tore him down. He refused to play my friend often even when I was supposed to be recovering from a broken ankle, he barely played him. I watched this kids’ confidence and mental health slowly decline throughout the season to the point where he almost quit baseball. This is just one of many examples of how a bad coach can really kill a kids confidence and affect their mental health.

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