Every athlete has a distinct relationship with their coach. Some can’t wait for the end of the season, while others find themselves crying after their last game or meet. No matter how they feel about the sport itself, every athlete understands the importance and benefits of having a healthy relationship with their coach.
As a player, a good relationship with a coach can be beneficial for many reasons. During their high school years, it can help a student-athlete to have someone in the building to go to when they need support. Being able to talk to someone you trust and have spent a lot of time with makes the school day much easier.
“Having a good relationship [with my coaches] means that I can trust them and go to them whenever I need something,” said Amani Meeks, a sophomore who is in her second season on the varsity basketball team. “If I have a question about anything, I just know I can talk to them, basketball related or not.”
If athletes have post-high school plans to continue playing a sport, having a good relationship with their coach is extremely helpful in terms of them being able to reach out to college coaches with film and letters of recommendation. Being able to communicate with your coaches about future plans is an important part of building a strong relationship and developing a better understanding of each other. Someone many student-athletes feel comfortable talking with is head football coach Michael Thorgesen.
“[Coach Thorgesen] is pretty adamant about getting anybody who wants to play in college an opportunity to play in college,” sophomore football player Jackson Slifka said. “I know we have guys almost every year who play, and I’d say if there’s going to be a coach to talk to about bringing your football career to the next level, it’d probably be him.”
To build a good relationship, it helps if the athlete opens up first. Every person has a different reaction to opening up, so it may take longer for coaches to get to know players depending on who they are. But the only way for a relationship to grow is for it to have some personal connection.
“You’ve got to figure out who [the athletes] actually are first,” girls head track & field coach and freshmen/sophomore assistant football coach Trevor McKeown said.
Some student-athletes talk strictly about their sport, while others open up further about their life outside of sports.
“Whether that’s knowing about their personal life, and for athletes especially, just getting to know what their interests are,” McKeown said. “Do they have goals further than high school? Do they have other things they like to do outside [of sports]? And then that’s when you can start that connection and get to know them a little bit more.”
To have trust and respect on a team, it is necessary for coaches to share their true personalities while also maintaining authority. By doing this, coaches build deeper connections with their players and are able to help them in times of need.
“There are times where I’m like, ‘Hey, make sure you’re taking care of yourself’, so there are definitely some [athletes] that you feel more personal with and I can coach them that way,” McKeown said. “But some of them don’t. They’re more driven and are able to do things when they have their instructions.”
While some players treat their relationship with their coach as strictly related to sports, others can feel like their coach is their close friend that they can go to for anything.
“My coach for basketball is [Brian] Claesson, and I feel like [our relationship] is very unserious because we just joke around a lot,” Meeks said.
Once a connection has formed, athletes can feel as if their coaches are like second parents to them, and this connection can last for years that go beyond their time spent on the team.
When in season, it can be common for athletes to spend more time with their teams than their parents, with one- to three-hour practices that happen five or six days a week for several months. That time spent together creates a connection that can be as strong as family.
