How coaches can make a long-lasting impact on their player's education without being great at maths!

As a parent of two daughters, much to my annoyance, I’ve become aware that ‘other’ sports coaches can sometimes tap into areas or get responses from my child in a way that I can’t…

For example, I was determined to teach my eldest daughter how to swim (…seen as though my profession is as a coach…). In my mind, I kind of made good progress, but my wife was clearly less impressed and signed her up for swimming lessons! Pride a little bit battered, I went with the process and would watch the swimming lessons with amazement… ‘what are these special powers this swimming coach has that makes her put her head under the water by just asking!?’

This article is essentially about the power a coach has. (This power can of course be leveraged positively or negatively, but I’ll zoom in on the positive)

As coaches, we need to be realistic that we sometimes get to see the best side of the player. Why? ‘Coach’ has the power to put players in the team and also take them out. So ill-discipline or missing training results in something significant in the life of the player who is dropped.

For many academy players, that’s not going to be how they look at school. Failure to do work or being rude to a teacher may result in consequences, but consequences that are not necessarily going to be linked to their football.

In South Africa, 40% of Grade 1 learners will exit the education system before finishing matric. ‘Zero Dropout’ is an organisation aiming to halve South Africa’s dropout rate by 2030 by spurring individual and collective ownership of the problem. They give a really helpful overview of some key issues around school dropout.

“Research shows that school dropout is rarely about a single event. Instead, it comes at the end of a long journey, in which the learner has been increasingly pushed or pulled away from school. Some learners stay in and do well at school, despite challenging circumstances. Researchers studying their resilience have found that these youth often succeed because they have “personal anchors – stable, positive emotional relationships with at least one parent or key person. Community members, teachers, parents, or caregivers can all play this role in a learner’s life; it takes persistence, a consistent presence, and an open heart to develop a relationship of trust. NGOs that we work with have also found that making a difference in the home environment, through learners’ primary caregivers, can be an effective starting point to keep learners in school.” https://zerodropout.co.za/category/advocacy/dropout-prevention-strategies/ *

As coaches, we are wise to find ‘easy wins’ in our daily coaching. Things that require little time or effort but produce big gains. I’d say one of the ‘easiest wins’ as a football coach (when looking through the lens of developing the ‘whole person') is to tell every player you train regularly that you need to see each of their school reports throughout the year. All of a sudden you as a coach have attached yourself to the academic progress of your player. The knowledge that ‘Coach’ is going to receive future school reports is in itself sometimes a significant motivator for the player to get a good report!

Just imagine, as a coach, you bump into one of your current players in a few years. He is aged 25, hasn’t managed to push through into pro football, hasn’t got a job, and doesn’t have any real vision for life. He tells you that he never ended up getting his matric as he just wasn’t interested in school at the time, but is kind of regretting it now. Now consider for a minute, in this hypothetical scenario, what you would now see as the thing that could have impacted most positively on the trajectory of his future?

• A. If you had spent extra time refining his skills so that he would now be a professional footballer

• B. You had been a closer part of his educational journey.

Of course, this is not an either-or thing, but my point is that sometimes coaches just don't realise that they can impact the players they coach in ways that they never really considered they had the authority or influence to.

*In my book DUAL DREAM, I highlight in several chapters content that relates to this 'personal anchor role', and how we can utilise those around us to help create a community of 'anchors' around the players being coached.