It is the end of the high school season for many volleyball
coaches, while some others are still in the fight for state championships.
Regardless of the results of the season, everyone is
breathing a sigh of relief after an intense few months, a time period that seems
both extremely short and extremely long. While talking to some of my coaching
friends who coach in the Fall, I got a sense that all is not well, worse than the
usual end of the season lament.
Coaching is always stressful and stress affects people differently.
The feedback is immediate, and as coaches, we are constantly challenged by the
competition, the group dynamics inherent in dealing with teams, the level of
player maturity, and the interactions with people outside the team, namely
administrators, parents, and others. Those are the known factors that have been
the nature of coaching since time immemorial.
It seems, however, that more than usual number of my friends
are dealing with more challenges than usual this season, much more than any other
previous seasons. One factor that comes immediate to mind is the 800-pound
gorilla in the room: the pandemic effect on the players and adults. As we want
to put that challenge behind us and believe that we have all survived the
pandemic unscathed, the truth is that the impact of three years of isolation on
coaches, the players, and their adults are yet undetermined. No doubt an army
of bright doctoral students in a myriad of subjects will study the daylights
out of this period in our history and will enlighten us about the effect of forced
isolation on our mental health many years from now. It is unfortunate that these future academics can’t tell us what
the hallmarks of these effects on human are immediately, because we need the information
to help us navigate our present; indeed, we need the information just to
survive.
Another concomitant factor has a much longer time scale: the
slow devolution of our collective mental health while living and dealing with modernity.
Many people in the mental health field have told me that the collective mental state
of our society is not so robust; that the known negative signs of mental state had
risen inexorably, well before the onset of the pandemic. The merging the
effects of the long and short-term mental stresses is a perfect storm, which
manifests itself in many new ways. The problem that we see in this instant appears
to be ambiguous and amorphous as we are not
cognizant of the telltale signs because we don’t know what those telltale signs
are a priori. More insidiously, synergistic effects of the long term and
short-term stresses may be magnifying the stresses exponentially, without us
realizing its potency.
I believe that we need to revisit our personal coaching philosophies
and answer the question: “Why Do I Coach?” at the end of every season. It helps
us to mentally align our own motivations in context of our realities. This
practice will either reinforce our resolve, to give us a reason to continue
what we are doing; or give us a reason to call it a day. A look back at our
past, our foundational philosophy, helps us to gain a perspective on why we
feel the way we feel at the moment and broaden our focus from the daily grind
of coaching. “Why Do We Coach?” is a good starting question to ask.
“I got into coaching for the money”, said no one ever. Most
of us started out as volunteers, serving our apprenticeship while learning the vast
body of knowledge that is coaching volleyball. A vast expanse of knowledge that
encompasses the technical, tactical, intellectual, pedagogical, and
psychological aspects of the seemingly disparate, infinite, and complicated range
of human endeavors. What keeps us in the coaching cult is, by implication, also
very complicated.
We can roughly divide the reasons or rewards for continuing
to coach into two broad categories: the extrinsic and the intrinsic. We are all
seeking some kind of reward in all that we do. This is not to say that we are all
slobbering dogs in a surreal video taking place Pavlov’s laboratory. On the
other hand, we are all very needy for incentives to motivate us.
The extrinsic reward for coaching is mostly about recognition.
Being recognized for excellence in our coaching, in our administration of the
team, our knowledge of the sport of volleyball, our secret knowledge of how to
succeed.
The intrinsic reward for coaching is mostly about
satisfaction. Being satisfied with reaching the goals established prior to the
season. Satisfaction with our own personal progress on our journey toward
mastering the art of coaching. Satisfaction
with knowing that our coaching made the difference for our players, whether it
is for the individual, a group of players, or the entire team. Part of the intrinsic
satisfaction comes from knowing that we are contributing to the village which guided and
educated an outstanding human being.
In many ways, extrinsic recognition is about how others
think of us; their value systems and judgements all intermingling with the
facts of the situation. In the Stoic
sense, the extrinsic recognition is completely out of our control as the
recognition comes from others, their opinions, personal mythologies, and biases
play significant roles in how that recognition is delivered, what form that
recognition manifests itself, and whether the recognition is given at all.
Intrinsic satisfaction comes from how we view ourselves. In
the Stoic sense, the intrinsic satisfaction is completely within our control as
the satisfaction derives from our own assessment, our reaction to our
perception of the factual events. There are no external recognitions involved so
the feelings that we feel are completely up to us.
As we are complex beings, the extrinsic recognition and
intrinsic satisfaction are always mixed as we assess the results from coaching.
We will, more often than not, mistake our personal need for intrinsic satisfaction with our ego’s desire
for extrinsic recognition. We will look for appreciation/recognition from others as a validation of those things where
intrinsic satisfaction should be plentiful reward. This thinking is what
sometimes creates tension within our minds because we are all Pavlov’s dogs
when it involves our egos. It matters to us that what we do matters to others.
It matters that the recognition of others about what we do, as ephemeral as
that recognition is, is expressed for all to take in and note.
Am I stating that we are all fools for public adulation? No.
I am saying that public adulation does not hurt our
feelings.
Should that hunger for public recognition be the main driver
of our efforts? Should that recognition be the main motivation for what we do?
Is it the reason “Why We Coach?” I don’t know. I can’t speak for others.
I do know that I don’t flinch or run away from recognition,
and I must be vigilant in observing my reaction to the recognition, and do emotional
triage on my reactions to what happens so that I can separate those
recognitions that is out of my control with the satisfaction that I derive from
my reactions that are within my control.
My hope is my friends can have the time and peace, critical
thinking skills, and mental acuity in these difficult times to sort through
their realities from their myths, their long term state of personal joy from their
short term moment in hell, and the validity of their long term personal
philosophies from their transient unhappy reaction to an unpleasant reality.
In short, I wish for them. Wisdom.
