What to Do: Coach Yells at Players

So you’re at your kids game and the coach starts yelling at the players. What do you do?

Read these four tips to help you out when you are faced with this situation.

These tips follow a cycle. What you can do long before this becomes a problem, what to do right before it might happen, when it happens, and what you can do afterwards.

Tip #1 Build a Relationship
What to do way before it happens

Something you should do way before the yelling ever happens is to build a relationship. So I'm talking about parents building a relationship with coaches. Reach out to them, introduce yourself, let them know who you are. When you first meet a coach, don’t start telling the coach how they should do things or what you think the team should be all about or where you think your kid should play. Just meet them, listen, and learn what their team is all about. You should do this because it’s important to start communication early. You don’t want your first encounter with your coach to be when you’re telling them to stop yelling at players. It's important to build a relationship, to get to know them, to learn about the team, to talk about things in a positive way before you'd ever have to approach them with something that you're upset about or a conflict that you might have.

Take Action for Coaches

Coaches if you're in this situation and a parent is coming up to you to talk to you about something be open to communication. Hopefully the coach knows this or is reading this blog post to know to start with positive communication first, but whatever it is, be open to parents communicating with you. 

Take Action for Parents

Parents, like I mentioned, introduce yourself to your coach, make sure they know who you are. And a great thing to do to start off is to show them appreciation. Tell them thank you for volunteering to coach or signing up to coach and for giving their time and their effort to help all the players on the team. 

Tip #2 Offer to help
Right before it happens 

There's a lot that a coach has to do, a lot of things that go into making sure everything runs smoothly on a team. It's a good idea to offer to help. Thinking ahead that the problem might be the coach yelling. Maybe they're overwhelmed. Maybe they have too much to do. Maybe they get frustrated and so they need some help. Only offer to help with what you're willing to help. So don't take on too much and don't take on things you're not really willing to do, but if you're able to see if you can volunteer or help out the coach in any way. In my opinion, I think the only thing that the coach should worry about is the players in the game. And that's a lot right there. So any other things that the team has to do or set up or anything that has to be done for the organization or the team, offer to help with so that all the coach has to worry about is the game.

Take Action for Coaches

Coaches make sure you let others help you out. Maybe you hire some assistant coaches or ask some people to volunteer to help you out. It's a lot to run a game and to manage a team. And so make sure that you find some people that you can trust that can help you. And if parents volunteer to help, find them some job to do some small job to do and really let them help let go of the control of everything and take some of the weight and the pressure and the jobs off of your back and let others help you out.

Take Action for Parents

Parents just take on what you can to take off stress from the coach. Maybe there's some small job that you can do that they just don't like doing. And if you take that off their plate, then they'll be less stressed. Of course you can't control what someone else is doing, but you can, you're in this for the community, for the team and you can do your best to help out the coach.

Tip #3 Let the Coach Know it Can’t Happen Again
When the problem happened

Let's say it happened the coach yelled at the players. He got angry, got frustrated, got upset and he kinda lost it and he was super negative or yelled at the players. And so now what do you do? You need to let the coach know that it can't happen again? It's just not cool to yell at players out of anger or frustration. Now, is it okay to feel those things? Absolutely. But the behaviors that come after the feeling shouldn't be hurtful or harmful to players in any way. It’s important to let the coach know that it's not acceptable. But you can also give support and give consequences. So let them know what happens if this happens again, if they yell at the players again or on the other end, if you know they're just overwhelmed, they're frustrated and they just need some support, give support in that way to help it from happening again.

Take Action for Coaches

Coaches, let's say you lost it. You yelled at players, you lost it in a game. What can you do? Well, first you can apologize. Maybe you need to apologize to a specific player or family. Maybe it's the whole team and then make a plan for next time with someone else, have someone to support you and help you for when this might happen again. I'm guessing it was probably triggered because you're angry. You're frustrated. Something didn't go your way in a game that you thought it should and you lost it. So you need some help controlling that or giving yourself an out to take a break or get a reminder. So it won't happen again. 

Take Action for Parents

Parents after you've let the coach know that this can't happen again, ask them what's their plan for next time so that it won't happen again. Hopefully they found some support or they've regrouped. Maybe they did apologize and they'll let you know it won't happen again, but make sure they have a plan in place to get that support, or at least, you know, what's going to happen so it will be prevented for the next time. 

Tip #4 Follow Up with an Email
After it happens

My last tip is something that you can do afterwards, maybe a week or two weeks after it's happened, but follow up with an email. If you're a parent let the coach know that you, maybe they apologized and you can appreciate that. Show them some gratitude for that and remind them of the plan that they said they'd have for the next time, so that it doesn't happen again. If you're the coach, you could follow up with an email, just explaining a little bit of what happened, apologize, and let them know it won't happen again. Tell them the plan in place to make sure it doesn't happen. So either from a coach or parent perspective, an email is a good way to follow up after.  An email documents what happened and gives a written account with a time and date for future reference if needed. Hopefully this is the only time this happens and it never happens again. But if a coach continues to yell at players, then you have some documented proof of what's going on and it's something that you can refer back to in the future. An email also helps everyone be on the same page. 

Take Action for Coaches

Coaches, I already mentioned this, but if you follow up with an email, make sure you apologize.

Everyone has big emotions during games. There's no denying that. And then sometimes your behavior acts out in a way that you wish wouldn't have happened. So make sure you follow up and apologize in an email to maybe just the player and a family, or maybe the whole team and let them know what is in place so it won’t happen again.

Take Action for Parents

Parents make sure in your email that you document what happened. You could also give a plan and some support and consequences for next time. Be sure to just. You know, kind of matter of factly, what had happened. If your coach did already apologize, you can put that in there. Show appreciation for that. That'll definitely give positive reinforcement to help it from happening again.

If you follow these tips this will help make it so you are in the best place to play, you have built positive relationships from the start you've offered to help so that no one person on the team has to carry everything. You consistently communicate in person and through email. And you make sure to follow through if an incident happened that wasn't anyone's best behavior you can follow through and follow up on that to hopefully prevent it from happening.