Coaching 101- Dealing with Adversity

On my walk today, I was listening to podcast with a baseball executive. His conversation was about how they evaluate prospects. I realize Major League Baseball is a long way from high school basketball, but this exec made a point that fits any level of sports. 

He described in the files they keep on prospects, one of the categories is “handling adversity.” Their belief is that every athlete is going to have to deal with adversity at some point. Adversities of a baseball player could be an injury, not being promoted, being in a slump, being held out of the lineup, losing, and more. 

The point is that all athletes will face adversity. According to this exec, one of the most important ingredients for success is the ability to handle adversity and go onto the “next play.”  So according to this exec, one of the best predictors of how our athletes will handle adversity in the future is to keep a record of how they have handled adversity in the past. 

For us as high school coaches, we need to be aware of our player’s history with adversity. How did they handle being disciplined by an English teacher? How do they handle tough coaching? How did they handle not starting in the past? 

We could go on and on looking at how players handled adversity. If they can’t handle adversity in the classroom or in practice, what makes us think they are going to effectively handle adversity in front of a large crowd and in a much more competitive situation of a game? 

Players can change and can “grow up,” but it is certainly important to be aware of our players ability to handle adversity.