Track and Field Toolbox

5 Tips for Dealing with Difficult Players

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Use these ideas to help manage players who challenge your team culture.

Most athletes do their best to avoid being disruptive, but every coach has encountered their fair share of challenging players. Next time this happens, consider using these tips to improve the situation.

Make sure everyone on the team is engaged

Kids, particularly younger ones, have a lot of energy and short attention spans. Keep your practices active and get every player involved. When running drills, aim to pair or group together players of similar skill levels. Every player will feel challenged, but not intimidated.

Also consider including small group work in your practices. This can bring shy players out of their shell while ensuring disruptive players are kept busy.

Every player is unique—your behavior expectations shouldn’t be

Getting to know your players is an important part of coaching. Everyone has different on-field and off-field strengths, motivations and unique personalities. But when it comes to behavior, your expectations should be standard across the board.

“You have to be consistent in your messaging. If that is your core principle, your core value, then everything has to be in alignment with that,” Gabe Infante, head football coach at St. Joseph Prep (Pa.), said. “I think it’s very easy sometimes to lose focus. Sometimes you become emotional about things and you lose the consistency of the message. It takes practice.”

It’s no secret good players sometimes feel like they can get away with subpar behavior because of their skill. At the same time, weaker players may take a lazier approach because they don’t feel like they’re contributing. It’s important everyone on the team understands how you expect them to behave. Be consistent, no matter who breaks the rules.

Reward good behavior with positive reinforcement

When players act out, it’s often because they want attention. So the best option might not be to call them out for it or make them run laps. Instead, pull them aside and have a one-on-one conversation to address their behavior. They won’t be the focus of attention, but you’re still addressing the situation.

You’ll also want to avoid only scolding players, unless they’re putting themselves or others at risk. Try pairing compliments with constructive criticism. Encouragement is often more effective than doling out punishment.

“A lot of young people can be resistant to coaching. They mistake coaching for criticism when in reality what the coach is trying to do is just help them get better. It’s really a partnership between the coach and the player,” Shaka Smart, head basketball coach at the University of Texas, said. Punishment has its place, just be sure players understand exactly what they did wrong so they know how to avoid it in the future.

“We’re the first time that a parent hears that their son isn’t good enough. How you deliver that and how you handle your players and how you develop respect and trust with your players is where it all starts.”Gabe Infante, head football coach at St. Joseph Prep (Pa.)

Don’t forget about the parents

Make sure your players’ parents understand the rules and expectations you have for the team. While parents can help keep their kids in line, you might find difficult parents just as common as difficult players.

Kids pick up a lot from the adults in their lives, so encourage the parents on your sideline to be good sports. Don’t be afraid to tactfully tell them if their behavior is a negative influence on your team. “A coach’s job, in my opinion, is very much the same as that of a parent—to prepare your children to live life without you,” Infante said.

The other key to strong parent-coach relationships is open lines of communication. Set ground rules such as ‘wait 24 hours after a contest to talk to me about it,’ but let them know you’re available to address their concerns.

Keep your cool even when you’re frustrated

Staying calm is easier said than done, but it can go a long way when it comes to dealing with difficult players. You’ll be able to make better decisions on behalf of your whole team.

Try to understand why the challenging players on your squad might be acting out without letting them monopolize your time. Listen to their concerns and consider the challenges they may be facing at home or at school. You may not be able to fix their problems, but they’ll appreciate your effort to meet them halfway.

And when it’s time to focus on the team, they’ll be ready. “We had a team meeting in the locker room and I said, ‘Guys, from this point forward we clear the mechanism,’” Steve Specht, head football coach at St. Xavier (Ohio), said.

“I don’t want to worry about what your grade in biology is or the issues you’re having with your girlfriend or any problems. When we set foot on this field, for two hours we clear the mechanism and we have fun.”

Want more tips on how to ensure players buy in to your coaching philosophy? Check out our comprehensive guide to reaching full program alignment.


Katasha Turner Makes “Queen” Moves in Selma

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As a Black woman building a successful career in sports, Katasha Turner leans on past examples while leading the next generation of Selma High School (Ala.) student-athletes.

Maybe in other towns, a school’s motto is just words on a wall. But here, in a fiercely proud, historically Black community, the mantra “Quality Education By Any Means Necessary” is emblematic of the spirit that’s persisted since John Lewis first stood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

That phrase serves as a rallying cry for faculty and students to dig deep and get the job done. No one embodies that energy more than the school’s athletic director, Katasha Turner.

While being interviewed for this story, Turner fielded our questions while also shepherding student-athletes leaving her track practice. That’s Turner’s happy place—the track. She was a talented runner herself before attending Alabama State where she was a student athletic trainer for track and field, as well as other sports.

She’s now the head coach for the track and varsity volleyball programs, in addition to being the athletic director. In other words, when her student-athletes head home, she goes right back to work.

While being an AD and coaching multiple sports is a tall order, continuing to coach was never in doubt. She loves it too much. And if you know Katasha Turner, you know there was no convincing her otherwise.

Following Their Example

Turner is strong-willed, grounded and hard-working. The strong women she looked up to in her youth instilled these traits in her.

Her aunts Eleanor—who worked at and served on the board of the YMCA—and Lucille—who was the president of the National Urban League—demonstrated how women should lead. Her grandma was a retired nurse that became a prominent figure in the St. Louis political scene. She taught a young Katasha how to make her voice heard in a male-dominated field.

Turner’s mother was a single parent, worked at Job Corp as a special education teacher, and taught G.E.D classes on the side. Turner admires her mother for her selflessness and dedication to those she served.

In short, her role models set the table for a glass-shattering career.

“You rarely see women athletic directors. And I mean, you rarely see African-American athletic directors,”

Taking the Reins

In 2019, Turner became just the second woman to be an athletic director in the history of Selma High School. And as a Black woman working in sports, Turner acknowledges obstacles and hurdles are everywhere.

“It’s tough as a female because people don’t think you know what you’re doing, and it’s especially tough for an African-American woman,” Turner said. “You can have all the certifications, you can have all that. But it is a challenge because sometimes people do not think that a woman knows what she’s doing.”

The stereotypes that exist against women, and Black women in particular, often deter them from pursuing roles in sports they’re qualified for (if not overqualified).

“You rarely see women athletic directors. And I mean, you rarely see African-American athletic directors,” Turner said. Few too many Black women exist in rooms where decisions are made.

That’s why Turner belongs to national organizations that work toward greater equity and opportunity for women and minorities in sports. She’s a member of the Global Community of Women in High School Sports and the National Organization of Minority Athletic Directors, or NOMAD.

Turner said building trust and getting buy-in are important for breaking through the stereotypes she faces. To earn that trust, she continues to look for ways to enrich the lives of her student-athletes.

Finding Ways to Empower Students

According to U.S. News & World Report, the Selma student population is roughly 900 students. The makeup is 99.9% Black, with 85% living in economically disadvantaged households.

Turner is committed to providing any opportunity possible to Selma students, not just to help them explore new interests, but to keep them safe.

This past year, Turner sent out a survey to students asking what activities they would be interested in if offered at their school. The results of the survey spurred six new athletic programs at Selma: 7-on-7 girls’ football, wrestling, girls’ and boys’ golf, and girls’ and boys’ e-sports teams.

Turner launched these programs because she knows how important it is to keep students active within the school. She uses the phrase “Be. B.I.G”—her shorthand for “Believe in Being Greater”—to encourage athletes to be their very best, on the field and off.

“The streets are always waiting,” Turner said. “Sometimes kids are going home to nothing, or nobody at home. But this is a chance to do something constructive and competitive. If [students] don’t like the situation that they’re in, hopefully this can be an avenue to help them maneuver themselves into other opportunities.”

Blazing Her Own Trail

Turner is the embodiment of creating opportunities through sports. In her coaching career of 16 years, she’s coached basketball, volleyball, softball, and track and field.

She opens herself to any challenge and any opportunity that comes her way—and she takes them head on. Her attitude and drive, combined with a wealth of knowledge and experience as an athlete and coach, have prepared Turner for the job she was born to do.

And now that she’s taken her seat at the table as Selma High School’s athletic director, she’s working tirelessly to provide opportunities for her students to take control of their own futures.

“I’m being the example that my mother, my grandmother, my aunts—that they showed me,” Turner said.

Katasha Turner is making “queen” moves, as she calls them: leading by example and demonstrating just how far a fearless attitude and hard work can take you.

The future is bright at Selma High School and Turner is putting her best foot forward to make sure it stays that way. By any means necessary.


How to Create a Positive Team Environment (And Win More While You Do)

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See more in-game success by developing a positive culture in three steps.

“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”

Sure, winning is important, but so is your players’ well-being. Just like positive teams are more productive in the workforce, they’re also more successful on the field or court. A good culture can develop naturally, but it’s up to coaches to create an encouraging environment. These three small steps can make a big impact on your team.

Measure Success beyond Ws and Ls

Whether or not your team has a winning season, it’s important for coaches to acknowledge the little wins, like your team executing certain plays better, or improving in a set of stats, along the way.

Individual improvement is another way to assess how far your team has come—like if the player who racked up the most penalties or fouls in your earliest games has cut that number in half by the end of the season.

Stats that align with your coaching philosophy are a good way to measure progress, but success can also be measured by your players’ individual and team efforts.

Involve the Entire Team

One of the key things students learn from high school athletics is the value of participation and teamwork. It’s easy to focus on your top performers, but great coaches find ways to make even their least skilled players feel like MVPs.

Be consistent in your interactions with players and find ways to involve your entire team (including the non-starters) in practices, workouts and game prep. Consider an exercise where players take turns discussing what each member brings to the team. This can reassure everyone that their contributions are key to the team’s success, no matter if it’s points scored or morale boosted.

Reinforce Good Behavior

On the team or individual level, positive reinforcement is generally more effective than punishment when it comes to changing behavior—and it creates a more constructive atmosphere on your team.

Players learn from your example. If they see you praising their teammates for good behavior rather than coming down on them for poor performance, they’re likely to do the same (even when you’re not around).

Take a few minutes in each review session to go over highlights—ideally before you begin the physical part of practice so the team is energized. Letting your players access game video helps them share these moments with their parents and friends, and giving them the opportunity to do this on their own will ensure you don’t need to devote too much important practice time to it.

For more ways to engage your athletes, check out our guide to building your coaching philosophy.


One Strength Training Program for Your Entire Athletic Department

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Want to know why you should get all your athletes in the weight room? James Coffey, Maine high school athletic director and coach, can explain.

Starting and maintaining a unified strength program for your entire athletic department is easily one of the most beneficial things you can do as an athletic director. It’ll help you build a winning tradition, prevent injuries, improve physical and mental strength—and definitely help you tally up wins.

So why doesn’t every high school in the country have one?

Well, that’s complicated.

Certainly there are schools in this country that have top-notch weight rooms that rival many colleges, but that’s the minority. There are also schools, particularly in districts where money is tight, that have nothing. No weight room, no strength coach, and maybe not even an athletic trainer. 

In my previous district, it took a full five years to entirely implement our strength program. We had some resources, but it still involved a lot of trial and error before we really had high participation and a rock-solid program. Once it was implemented, we offered the program after school, and in the summer, we had a program running three days a week. The first summer after implementing the full program, our combined athletic department fall record was 92-13. 

We’re now in my current school’s fourth year of having one strength program. After some improvements to our weight room, and settling in with a highly respected local strength coach, we’re starting to see player improvement and fewer injuries. 

If you’re looking to start a strength program at your school, there are two main elements you need: a room and someone to run the program. 

Use what you have

Do you have a weight room currently? If so, is the equipment safe and up-to-date? If you don’t have one, try to find an open space you could use. 

My school’s weight room was super small. It was cluttered with old Nautilus equipment and big bulky machines. We actually gave away a bunch of the old equipment we weren’t using to create more space. Then we discovered a storage room adjacent to the weight room that was full of old, unused equipment. We got rid of a lot, found another space to store the rest and knocked the wall down between the storage room and our weight room. That expanded our weight room by over 500 square feet. 

We laid down a new rubber floor, bought a mint condition rack of dumbbells (5’s-100’s) from a local resident, and were able to secure three new power racks. In a few months, spending just the money we had available, we were able to significantly upgrade our facility.

A lot of second-hand equipment is still in great shape and costs a fraction of what you’d spend on new weights.

Who runs it? 

In a perfect world, you’d have an expansive weight room and a nationally certified strength and conditioning coach, but it’s just not the reality for most schools. For a lot of athletic departments, only the football program does any strength training and that’s usually run by the coaching staff. 

So what resources do you have that you could leverage? Do you have a PE teacher, coach or an athletic trainer that has a background or certification in strength training? Is there a local gym you could contract through? Is a parent/guardian or booster group connected with a strength coach in the area?

In one school I worked in, we contracted a respected national organization to come in and run a two day, in-service workshop for our coaches. All of our coaches were certified to their standards, and we used that training to implement a strength program for our athletes. It worked well for us.

My current school contracts through a respected local gym that’s geared toward athletic performance. They provide us great service at a reasonable cost.

Create a program for everyone

Our program is simple, yet effective. We aren’t sport-specific, and that’s key. Our goal is to make our kids stronger, better athletes through a foundation built on basics. We change the exercises each session, but every workout follows the same simple structure:

  1. Push something
  2. Pull something
  3. Squat
  4. Hip hinge
  5. Carry something

Make sure to have a lot of varying weight options to cater to all your athletes.

This broad framework allows you to differentiate instruction between kids based on their abilities. Not by sport. Every athlete in every sport can benefit from a strength program. And so can your school.

 


Four Things You Can Do Today to Start Building Your Athletic Department Brand

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Building your athletic department brand is the first step in creating state cham­pi­onship-caliber programs. These principles can help you get started.

Seventeen years ago, when I started at Springfield Central High School as an assistant principal, we had one of the lowest performing athletic programs in the Western Massachusetts region and one of the largest student bodies in the Commonwealth. 

There’s plenty of proud history at this inner-city school—our gym not only displays state title banners, but also the jerseys of past alums who made it to the NBA and MLB. However, the school was in the midst of a dramatic downturn in athletic success and there was little to boast about when I arrived.

Fast forward nearly two decades. Across the board, our teams are some of the most competitive in our state’s highest level. Our boys’ and girls’ basketball teams routinely reach the final weekend of postseason. Our wrestling program often wins state championships, and our football team is now considered one of the most powerful in New England. During live recruiting periods, coaches from the Big Ten, ACC, Ivy, and Patriot Leagues visit our school. 

In 2018 our football team became the first to win a statewide MIAA football championship in Western Mass.

The turning point? Our brand. Building it has been a slow, methodical process with many bumps along the way, and we continue to work hard at it every day of the year. But it’s also been a tremendous learning opportunity, with the benefits far exceeding our expectations. 

If you’re about to start your own brand-building journey, keep these principles in mind.

You can’t do it alone.

A team of like-minded people working alongside you is key to your initiative. I was lucky to have an administrative colleague share my views about the potential of our brand. 

Together, we systematically made decisions that helped us gain traction towards our ultimate goal. We scrutinized every hire and tried to find individuals that were excellent in the classroom and accomplished coaches.  

As a rule, we hire people, not resumes. Some of the most successful, effective, and influential people in our building started off as uncertified teachers working towards their advanced degrees. And any time we get a chance to hire an alumni, we do. We believe they have an intrinsic loyalty to the school and can relate to our current students. Our goal is to create a family atmosphere.  

Bottom line—it takes a village. Find someone with like minded views to help you kick-start your goals. 

The best ability? Repeatability.

We created a school motto that we could take immense pride in, “Home to Scholars and Champions.” Years ago, we noticed a school from the West Coast had a similar motto and was extremely successful for its area. Their students were no different than ours, so we thought, “If that school could manifest their own destiny, why not us?” Our motto was born and we never stopped pushing it.

Seventeen years later, “Home to Scholars and Champions” is what people know us by. We’ve tagged it everywhere we could—our stationary, our hallways, our gymnasium wall—and every time students underperform, we point out our motto is the expectation. 

This catchy, repeatable motto is relative to almost anything in life. A scholar-athlete is more specific to the classroom, but a champion is a champion in life. 

Combine consistency and creativity.

As part of our process, we realized our school’s logo needed an upgrade. Two of our most dynamic coaches came up with the solution.

Our current football coach took over a decade ago and wanted to create a unique identity for us. He created our “C” logo, an inverted two-tone twist on the University of Miami’s iconic “U” logo. All of our sports teams use the “C” in their uniforms. When anyone sees our gear, they immediately know it’s Springfield Central. 

Meanwhile, our wrestling coach had been toying with another logo with our mascot, the Golden Eagles. So we combined that eagle with our “C” to create a fierce logo, a singular identity. This new logo will adorn our newly-renovated basketball court starting in the 19-20 school year.

One logo for all the teams strengthens our brand.

Rally the community.

When you’re an inner city school, everything that goes wrong in the city gets equated with the school system. It’s a tough reputation to shed. As hard as we tried, people just didn’t find academic success that interesting. It’s hard to get the attention of the media from a positive perspective. 

But when you have an athletic win, they’re almost forced to put it in the paper. And our brand could be out in the community in a positive way.

It’s amazing how many people will stop you on the street to say, “Hey, you’re having a great year.” They have no idea what you’re doing academically, but when they see your name in the paper for athletics, it connects positive thoughts to your school.

I recently researched how many times our athletic teams garnered headlines in a local news outlet versus how many times we were mentioned for academic reasons. The ratio was 97 to 1. When we quantified this with a projected advertising cost, it equated to tens of thousands of dollars.

We’ve been fortunate to get the full support of our city’s political community. They want to see us be successful academically and socially, and our positive identity allows us to get the support we need. 

You’ll see them at games—our mayor, our superintendent, school committee members, city councilors—cheering for us, proud of us. It drives home that what we do as an athletic department is important. 

We also try to bring back alumni as much as possible. Travis Best, who was a McDonald’s All-American a quarter-century ago at Central and went on to great success in the NBA, can always be found in our stands when he’s in town. His jersey is the only retired number for any of our athletic programs. 

Every year we hear stories from students who have dreamed about becoming a Central High School Golden Eagle. It’s a great feeling to know your school is providing amazing academic and co-curricular opportunities for students who are historically disadvantaged. We’ve even had students turn down full-scholarship opportunities from prep schools to become part of our community. 

We don’t have all of the answers but we hope to continue to improve, grow and develop. Resources like this blog can help us, and other schools across the country, share ideas and best practices to ensure positive experiences and future opportunities for student-athletes everywhere. 

Tad Tokarz has been a high school administrator for 18 years, working his entire career in an urban district. He also teaches adjunct classes focused on educational leadership, special education and professional development at American International College.