It is only recently through reflections in my last two courses at Michigan State University (MSU) that I have discovered how much I enjoy coaching and all of its’ facets. I can only give credit to the me two years ago that decided to further my education with a master’s degree. There are many benefits to this decision that I made two years ago, for instance, the salary increase I will get as a teacher, the recognition of being educated at the level of earning a masters degree, but most importantly, the knowledge and insight that I have gained as a student. My experience at MSU has truly changed the way that I continue to think about where I want my future to go. For so long, I was convinced that Assistant Principal or Principal of a school was the destination. As a teacher there is only so much upward mobility that is granted to you. The opportunity in this upward climb has to come from earning a higher degree and moving out of the classroom. Over these last two years, choosing to focus on leadership and a graduate certificate in sport coaching and leadership has changed that final destination. Where I want my career to go may still not be fully settled on, but at only twenty-six years old I am excited that I have many options open to me. It was some of the work in my kinesiology courses that really pushed this idea. I would have not thought that the Masters of Arts in Education (MAED) program would have taught and changed me so much. 

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One of the first courses I took was a Kinesiology course, KIN 855, Psychosocial Basis of Coaching. In this course I was able to look at the different types of leadership behaviors, understand the best ways to communicate with my athletes, and gain knowledge on the best ways to help an athlete develop the mental skills they need to increase performance. Although this information was for a coaching focused class, these skills also applied to my teaching. This was the first course where I started to see my outlook on how I coached changed. When most people think of coaches, they sometimes get a bad rap. I think that it is very common for many people to think that the biggest focus of a coach is to correct errors that are being made, instruct, instruct, instruct until the athlete understands, and for some reason, yelling. Part of this may have to do with social media or movies where it is common for the coach to be yelling or forcing athletes to run as some punishment. This class really takes a look into how praise and taking a step back may be the best method for an athlete to improve. There are certain things like, making sure you are telling a player good job only when they have really hit the skill you want them to learn and not when they get part of it, that a lot of coaches probably don’t think to do. Athletes need to be given time to explore the skills of the sport. Sometimes in teaching, this is a great method as well. Instruction can get really boring when you are up there every day spewing the notes to the students. Give them an activity and help them or guide them to learning a concept through exploration.

 

The importance of self-reflection is made extremely clear in this course and down the road continued to be important in all of my courses. I was able to reflect on how I speak to my players and observe behaviors that other coaches use that don’t do well with their athletes. For instance, in one of our projects I was able to observe a basketball coach at my school who exhibited many negative behaviors towards coaching his athletes. He wanted to read the analysis in the end, which at first felt pretty uncomfortable to me to do, but in the end he appreciated it because I was using the Coaching Behavior Assessment System that we had learned about in class. He took what I had analyzed him on to get better. I point this out because many coaches do not get the opportunity to take classes designated to coaching specifically. A lot of us end up coaching and getting hired based on prior experience of playing or previous coaching years. Right out of college, a lot of us hope that someone takes a chance on us for that first job. The education systems can’t fully afford to pay for coaches to take classes, but everyone gets the basics in CPR and First Aid and some schools add in Child Abuse and Sexual Harrasment courses. I left KIN 855 with a greater understanding of coaching behaviors that will positively impact my athletes. I also learned how to encourage the in simple ways and how to teach them to build that mental toughness with positivity. Coaching, similar to teaching, has a great deal to do with how we speak to our athletes, trusting them and guiding them. This includes teaching my athletes all there is to know to make them better. This leads me into the next course that impacted my coaching, KIN 868, Skill Development of Athletes. 

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A Change in Coaching Techniques

 

 It is always important to understand your first reactions to a new word or topic. In this course, the new word was constraint. This new word was followed by two others, Constraints-Led Approach, which covered the whole idea, but what sticks out is our first word. A constraint is defined as a limitation, restriction, or a stiffness of manner in relations between people. With this definition comes a negative connotation towards the word. As a coach, does it sound appealing to use a Constraints-Led Approach when you think it means you need to limit or restrict your athletes? The answer is probably no. It would not sound as appealing to the uneducated eye. I would consider myself a new coach with only four years of experience and over the last two years is the only time that I have really educated myself on coaching through the Michigan State program. Therefore, I would have agreed with those who assumed a CLA (Constraints-Led Approach) was something I did not want to do. But, after learning about the CLA, it is not something that is negative, but seems to be something that you already do as a coach that just needs a little more knowledge behind it. This approach wants coaches to take a step back and be more hands off to allow for the athletes to explore their movement patterns to find one that works best for them. Does that sound familiar? It should because it was also part of the information that I had learned in KIN 855 as well. 

 

One of the great parts about this class was that everything we were learning was easy to apply in a coaching or teaching scenario. One of the big takeaways was learning about the different individual, environmental and task constraints that we as coaches can manipulate to help our athletes increase their performance pertaining to skills of the sport. The individual constraints were those that were not changeable, things that humans are born with and their genetics. An example would be height or loss of limb. Those are things that we cannot control. Environmental constraints were interesting to think about because these range from thinking about the crowd in a game and teaching athletes how to deal with crowds that are too quiet or too loud to the socioeconomic constraints that the sport faces. For example, volleyball is extremely popular in California, Texas, and Oregon, but not in Maine or Massachusetts. In the areas where the sport is more popular, parents may choose to spend a little more money for their child to play this sport. A task constraint focuses on the rules of the game, the equipment, and the goals athletes or the team are trying to reach. In one of our projects we were asked to develop a practice plan using the CLA in order to put our new knowledge to use and to make sure we understood it. I focused on a skill in the sport of volleyball called forearm passing and looked at the different issues that athletes have when learning this school. With those issues I thought about the different ways I could constrain the task at hand to help them achieve the goal. Coaches need a lot of knowledge of the sport and of how to coach to be successful and unfortunetly it is not something that is offered or given to many coaches. Learning the CLA has helped my coaching drastically over the last few months and has pushed me to continue to research it and use it in practice planning daily. I know that these were things that were not fully employed when I learned the sport, but I know that I will not go back to the old way of coaching after taking this course. 

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Keeping My Athletes Safe

 

One of the most important classes I took was KIN 829, Safety and Injury Prevention. This class taught me how to break down an injury and how to prevent injury in young athletes. As a coach it is essential to know how to create an environment that is safe for athletes to grow and learn safely. It is essential that this environment helps athletes feel comfortable coming to you when something is aching them. Without this comfortability with injury athletes are at a higher risk. We read articles of coaches that asked athletes if they were good enough for the game, if they could keep playing. This environment that forces athletes to push through injury is not safe. Each practice and training session that I put my athletes through has to be designed to promote learning through positivity and safety. I had an experience this past season with an athlete who had bad knees. I knew that I had put the knowledge from this course into place because through out the season her knees were getting worse. I made sure that we had her doctor and our athletic trainer up to date on how she was feeling day to day. She was cleared to play only if she could be honest with herself about how she felt that day and what she was capable of. Some days that meant that she told me, “Coach, I cannot play today” and that was okay for me. Other days she only played half of her rotation and that was okay too. I think that in the past this environment where athletes felt okay sharing injuries with their coaches was not one that was always at the forefront of my mind, but definitely one that should always be thought of.

 

Another benefit to this course was the knowledge I gained on how to diagnose and treat an injury. Two of the most common injuries in volleyball are jammed or sprained fingers and sprained ankles. I think that as a coach of sport, it is important to know the most common injuries in your sport, how to diagnose them, and how to treat them. I even went further to work with my athletic trainer and had him show me the ways to assess a sprain versus a jam. This has already proven to be useful twice in my coaching in the last 3 months. It is comforting to me and of course, to the parents, that I was able to diagnose the sprain and told them how to treat the injury at home. I had my athletes back to 100% in no time. 

 

And Beyond!

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            When I first decided to go to graduate school it was because I wanted to further my education and open up the range of possibilities in which I could further my career in education and in sport coaching. I never would have imagined the impact that it has had on me in both aspects of my career and on my future goals. These three classes, KIN 829, KIN 855, and KIN 868 had a profound impact on my coaching and my goals. I gained an immense amount of knowledge in so many areas that are useful in coaching and teaching that I have seen the changes in my athletes and students. In KIN 829, I learned some of the most important facts on how to assess, diagnose, and treat injuries and prevent them. In KIN 855, I learned to look beyond the physical demands on the volleyball court, but to also think about the mental game and how it important it is as well as the interactions I have with my athletes. In KIN 868 I learned the different ways to manipulate my practice plans to help my athletes develop unique movement patterns to find a solution to a skill in my sport. While this was only three of the ten classes that I took over the course of two years, they summarize where I have ended and where I will continue to go with my career. I cannot wait to see what the future holds for this new MSU graduate!

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