By: Conley Chinn, Edited By: Jack Tucker

Sports have been a part of my life for a long time. When I was only four years old, I was on the soccer field. After that, my dad had me dribbling in the basketball gym. If you started playing sports at a young age like me, I am sure you have experienced many different coaches. My dad was my first coach, but after being on all of the different teams in my years of sports, I have probably had over 20 different coaches. Whether they realize it or not, my great coaches and my not-so-great coaches have all made a huge impact on my life. A coach can make or break a season, a team, and especially a player. A coach can completely change the way a player feels or thinks about a sport, causing her to quit entirely or leading her to continue her athletic career at the next level.

I will never forget my high school basketball coach, Jan Sojourner. She was the most hardworking, caring, and influential coach I have ever had. She demanded effort and excellence from every player that she coached, and she led our team with a level of enthusiasm and positivity that made me want to be a better player and learn more about the game. After all my years of playing sports, I have found that the coaches that have had the biggest impact on my life are the ones that were simultaneously demanding and encouraging like she was.

Paul Turman and Paul Schrodt, professors at the Universities of Northern Iowa and Texas at Arlington respectively, conducted and published a research study in 2009 titled “New Avenues for Instructional Communication Research: Relationships Among Coaches’ Leadership Behaviors and Athletes’ Affective Learning” in Communication Research Reports. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between how athletes felt about their coaches’ leadership styles and the impact coaches had on their athletes’ individual learning. Using the “Leadership Scale for Sports,” a common behavioral survey used by sports psychologists since 1980, the researchers surveyed numerous athletes about their perception of their coaches’ leadership and coaching styles.

The different leadership behaviors of the coaches were identified as either “autocratic,” “democratic,” “social support,” “training and instruction,” or “positive feedback” behaviors. A coach with an autocratic coaching style is perceived as being dictatorial, while a coach with a more democratic style allows more participation from athletes when making decisions. A coach that demonstrates social support focuses primarily on nourishing an athletes’ personal needs. Coaches exhibiting a training and instruction style focus on improving the athletes’ skill sets and understanding of the sport, and a positive feedback behavior from a coach shows appreciation to an athlete which improves her confidence. The results of the study indicated a supportive relationship between affirming coaching styles that include positive feedback, social support, training and instruction, and democratic behaviors and the athletes’ individual learning.

This research makes perfect sense of my experience. Whenever I had a more autocratic or controlling coach, I felt as though I had no freedom when playing, making the sport no fun. On the other hand, I enjoyed the sport more whenever I felt personally supported and cared for by a coach, making me to want to try harder. When a coach allowed the team to have some freedom on the court and made an effort to encourage and affirm each player, we all could relax and enjoy playing. Of course, we still knew we needed to work hard, but having a more positive relationship with our coach helped the whole team enjoy long and tough seasons.

Don’t get me wrong; coaches can’t always be overly encouraging and positive. Like any other adult trying to teach or guide young people, coaches must demand respect from their athletes and enforce rules. Coach Sojourner, and almost every single other coach in my athletic career, had to even yell at me occasionally so that I would do the right thing. What makes a coach a great leader is not simply her kindness, but it is the coach’s effort and desire to teach her athletes well.

When coaches display a positive and supportive coaching style, they demonstrate prosocial behavior and promote athletes’ self-esteem and confidence. When athletes experience a higher level of self-esteem, their learning abilities and performance levels are positively affected. The research of Turman and Schrodt also found that a coach-athlete relationship is very similar to a teacher-student relationship. When a student feels confident in their abilities in the classroom, they perform better. When a team feels confident in their abilities on their playing field, they perform better too.

In a different study, “Power Play: Coach Power Use and Athletes’ Communicative Evaluations and Responses” which was published in the Western Journal of Communication in 2015, researchers Gregory A. Cranmer and Alan K. Goodboy found that a positive coaching style led to positive reactions from athletes and success for both individuals and teams. Their study included over 90 collegiate student-athletes who completed a questionnaire regarding their coaches’ behaviors, communication styles, and their levels of satisfaction with the states of their teams and their levels of success. The study was conducted in order to determine if a coaches’ power use and behavior predicted athletes’ satisfaction with a coach’s communication and feedback, after accounting for sport-related factors such as winning percentage, sport-type, and individual success.

The results of the study showed that players experienced a more comfortable and positive relationship with their coaches when the coach exemplified a rewarding, prosocial coaching style, not a punitive and intimidating one. When coaches used rewarding, prosocial communication styles with athletes, athletes were more likely to view the coaches’ instructions as valuable. This positive relationship between a player and a coach also correlated with an athlete’s success as measured by individual playing time, personal statistics, and overall team success. When a coach regularly used harsh or anti-social feedback, athletes experienced more negative feelings, hindering their learning. Players with negative relationships with their coaches did not experience the individual or group success that those with more positive relationships did.

Speaking from experience, one of the biggest struggles that athletes face is a struggle against themselves and their own confidence. When a coach makes the effort to push and encourage their athletes to be the best that they can be, each athlete is more likely to reach her full potential. The same is true for nearly everything with a coach, leader, or instructor. Having a positive relationship with that teacher makes learning and performing better for everyone involved. Whether you are an athlete or not, I hope you have had a Coach Sojourner in your life; someone who encourages you to be your best and challenges you to work harder than you have ever worked before.