It’s interesting the lessons that teenage athletes can teach us. Yesterday, I helped coach a team of 16 year old volleyball players in a tournament. The tournament was a critical point in the season for our team. Win and we move up a division. Come in second or worse and we’re stuck in the lower division with not much chance for the players to get scouted by college coaches.
It was a big deal for the team and something we’ve been training for since September.
The team was not at their best during the round robin, but still finished 1st in their pool. During the quarter final match, the wheels fell off. What should have been an easy win turned into a battle for every point. In the final deciding game to 15 points, the other team ran the score up 8-1 to open the game. In volleyball, this is pretty much a death sentence. It’s unheard of to come back from such a deficit in a game that only goes to 15.
As coaches, we tried everything in our arsenal to give our team a chance to come back. We burned through our timeouts and substitutions until there was nothing left for us as coaches to do. We had tried everything and were still down by a huge margin.
I sat on the bench, and I was defeated. In my mind, the team had already lost, and I was trying to figure out what to say to them following our certain defeat.
This is when I learned about how mentally tough teenagers can be. Even though I was thinking that winning was impossible, they didn’t give up. When they were on the verge of defeat, they dug in and fought with everything they had. It wasn’t a situation where we went on a scoring run and scored ten points in a row to even things up. Instead, we would score two or three points and the other team would score one. This battle repeated until we managed to tie the game at 14-14.
It was at that point that my outlook changed. Had something magical happened? Why had I just moments before been in despair, yet now had hope, and confidence they would pull off a remarkable comeback?
Not only did they proceed to win that match but cruised the rest of the day to win Gold and achieve their goal of moving up a division. It wasn’t a win by any individual player, but only accomplished by every member working as a team together.
What did I learn from this?
- Teenagers are a lot stronger than we give them credit for.
- Stay in the moment and embrace it. Sometimes it’s better not to spend so much mental energy thinking too far in advance.
- Each player will handle the pressure and the outcomes very differently and it’s important for coaches to recognize and assist them through this very individual process.
- I believe in these kids and going through this with them showed me how much I’m mentally and emotionally invested in them.
- Don’t forget to breathe…
Congratulations Guelph Jr. Gryphons! I’m so proud of each one of you.
Clinical Research 
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