In the book transformational leader ship by Joshua Metcalf and Jamie Gilbert, they tell a story on page 114 about motivation. This is a tough one to implement, but if you can do it, and behave in the way that they are suggesting, I think you could serve you really well. The chapter is called "you've lost your privilege. See you tomorrow. "And the purpose of the chapter is to talk about motivation, and why people behave the way they do.  The concept is simple, reward healthy behavior that you want to see repeated, and ignore poor behaviors. We have all heard this before, but never been given a strategy on how to do that. Most of our kids want to play, that's why they come to practice, and games. It's why we have hard conversations about playing time more than anything else. So, when your athletes love to be a part of a team, and love to play the game that you coach, the best motivator you have is the opportunity to practice and be with the team. So I want to share a story from this book, it highlights how much of a privilege it is to be able to practice with the team, and in order to earn that privilege, our athletes best effort is the price. "The easiest and most simple way to create new behaviors through and forth and clearly explained healthy boundaries with love and respect.  The story they use goes like this, in order to play on this team you have to meet certain standards   We set a boundary for timeliness in one of the teams I work with. The very next day three guys in the freshman class showed up late to practice. I got Coach and came over and said what should I do? I said well what do you want to do? I think I'm going to say it doesn't look like you're interested in getting better because you showed up late. You've overstepped a boundary. You lost your opportunity to get better with the team today. Go home and will see you tomorrow.  Awesome, I'd like you to drop the first part we do not know why they are late that is judgment and that is irrelevant. They are late and that's all that matters. So he walked right over them shared what he had prepared and then walked away like nothing had changed. When the guys came back the next day he treated them like nothing happened and said it's great to see you today I can't wait to watch you work hard and get better as it turned out they get pulled over by the police on the way you guys result not judge them turned out to be something that significantly strengthen their relationship or three guys texted him that night sincerely apologizing and I vowed to respect boundaries moving forward since then I've been on time for everything we do.   In a similar story, a coach got a text from a player who she asked to step out of practice because she was not given the effort they had said as a standard. The young lady stormed out of the gym, but later the coach got a text apologizing and promising to come back tomorrow and go hard. The coach his response was "I love you too much to allow you to make a choice like that and get away with it. You are going to make mistakes as we go but I trust that you'll learn from it and grow from it. Come back tomorrow and get back to work.   We must behave in such a way that our players know we love them and care about them, even if at times they might be hard to love, or some are easier to love than others. These stories and examples are concrete ways to do that.