The World Through My Eyes: Poems, Short Stories, and Journals

Negative Impacts of Poor Coaching on Young Players (Personal Research Paper)

Maddy Holleran was an all-American track star at the University of Pennsylvania. She was struggling with depression and anxiety during her first semester. With the added pressure from competing in collegiate sports and schoolwork, she did not talk about her problems to anyone. Maddy Holleran committed suicide at the age of 19, on January 17, 2014. The impact of her story has brought awareness towards the struggles of athletes and how sports can affect young adults' overall mentality. The effects of negative coaching on adolescent players are harmful to their developing mind by not understanding the principles of bad coaching, creating unwanted pressure to perform, distorting their mental game, and causing mental health issues to the player.
    First and foremost, young athletes' developmental issues at such a young age are caused by the impact of bad coaching. If the coach is providing negative feedback to the players constantly, it will create an underlying expectation that no matter what the team does—those athletes will never be enough. Also, if the coach singles out players and points out their mistakes, it embarrasses the player. That athlete might feel as if they are worthless to the team and feel like they might be a cause of the team's problems. Negative coaching creates a "work-hard only" environment for the athletes, and the players don't experience the fun of the game.
    On the other hand, one of the effects of negative coaching on young players creates pressure to perform due to high expectations and the player will push themselves too far to exceed those expectations. With competing at high-level sport, there come high expectations from parents and coaches. The athlete tries to always impress the people around them and feel as if they could have done more. They might go through a stage of destruction to themselves; likewise, this affects the physical aspects of the game, which includes injuries due to overuse, or ignoring the fact that the athlete might be pushing through pain to finish a game. Physical impacts can lead to affecting the mental game as well.
    Additionally, the impact of negative coaching destroys the athlete's mental game, so this creates an illusion of control for the player and reduces the player's overall performance. Playing sports for a long amount of time, the athlete will establish an internal coach along with the mental game. This internal coach will make the athlete become harder on themselves. The mental game also involves the environment around that player; moreover, that will carry over to the teammates by nitpicking at the other players' mistakes or blaming the other teammates for the uncontrollable issues. 
    With everything in mind, the last effect of negative coaching on young athletes impacts them in the future by generating mental health issues, and the player will feel uncomfortable talking about their problems. An athlete would overanalyze what mistakes were made, and that can cause them to have anxiety about the sport. Eventually, anxiety can escape into self-confidence issues. This mentality can cause the player to change themselves in a harmful way, like self-harm. On another aspect, athletes feel like they cannot talk about their problems. Therefore, athletes bottle up emotions and thoughts, which feeds anxiety and depression. 
    On a final note, coaches' bad actions can affect young athletes' perception of the sport because of poor coaching techniques, established pressures to perform, disfigurement of the mental game, and the overall mentality of the athlete. At the end of the day, a child is playing a game, not a professional sport. Playing sports is about fun and creating meaningful life lessons that can be carried on into life. How would you feel if your child was on the brink of sanity and you did not know about what was going on inside their head?