The Sports Coach Podcast

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Most coaches overestimate the big moments and underestimate the ordinary ones. In this episode Coach Collins borrows a lesson from an NFL sideline, where a head coach told his young quarterback that you cannot get bored taking what the defense gives you, and applies it straight to the coaching profession. The temptation for coaches is the same as it is for quarterbacks. Eventually we want to make the spectacular play. But the spectacular should never have to make up for the ordinary things we quietly stopped doing.

Coach Collins makes the case that the best coaches he ever competed against were not great because of a brilliant set or a famous locker room speech. They were great because they did ordinary things unusually well. They planned practice on paper with minutes. They explained expectations before they mattered. They had hard conversations early. They followed up. They noticed the kid at the end of the bench. They taught the same fundamental for the five hundredth time with the same energy as the first.

The episode then turns practical with five habits every coach can sharpen this week: falling in love with the practice plan, stating expectations before correcting them, doing the follow up, intentionally giving attention to the players who are not playing, and guarding your energy for the ordinary days when nobody is watching. Because players do not rise to the big moment. They fall back on whatever their coach made routine.

The challenge is simple. Write down the three most boring things that make your program good, and ask whether you are still doing them as well as you did your first year. Great teams make the routine play routine, and great coaches do the same thing.

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Your season does not start on the first day of practice. It starts about four weeks earlier, which means for most coaches it has already started. In this episode Coach Collins makes the case that by the time you blow the first whistle in November, a surprising amount has already been decided: who trusts you, who believes they matter to you, who showed up in shape, and what the air in your gym is going to feel like.

The episode opens with an uncomfortable question. If your first practice were tomorrow morning, what would your team already know about you? Not what you plan to tell them in that first meeting, but what they already know today without you saying a word. Kids are not waiting on your speech. They have been reading you since June.

From there Coach Collins lays out three things a coach can put in the bank in October that cannot be recovered in February. The first is relationships, because you cannot build trust in a timeout. The clock is running, the crowd is loud, and a player who does not trust you will not suddenly start trusting you with nine seconds left. That work happens now, in the boring hours, and the episode gives a simple assignment: write out the full roster, then go find five of those kids this week at a soccer game, a cross country meet, or in the hallway.

The second is clarity. One page, written in plain language, covering what we do here, what we do not do here, what earns time and what loses it. If you cannot write it on one page, you cannot coach it in a gym, and fog on paper becomes fog in practice. Coach Collins urges coaches to write it now while they are calm, because nobody writes an honest standards page in December when they are two games under and everybody in town has an opinion.

The third is the coach himself. Too many coaches walk into the first practice already worn out, already behind, already carrying a season of stress before the season exists. The episode makes a direct case for getting the calendar out in October, defending the nights that belong to your family, and deciding in advance what you are saying no to. A tired coach in November becomes a short tempered coach in January, and the players and the family both pay for it.

This is an episode for coaches who want a head start instead of a scramble, built on one idea: February is not won in February. It is won on a quiet Tuesday in October when nobody was watching.

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Tryouts are coming, and with them the part of coaching nobody puts on a highlight reel. In this episode Coach Collins takes on cut day, the two hours a year that reveal more about a program than any game on the schedule. After a long career he is blunt about it: it never got easier, not once, and it should not.

The central idea is that everybody in the building is watching how you do it. The kid being cut is watching. His parents are watching. His friends in the hallway are watching. And your returning players are watching the closest of all, because they are learning exactly what a person is worth in your program once he stops being useful to you. How you cut a kid is not a side issue. It is one of the loudest culture statements you make all year.

Coach Collins walks through four things worth fighting for. Tell players before tryouts exactly what you are evaluating, how many days it will take, who is deciding, and when they will know, because kids can handle bad news but mystery wrecks them. Deliver the news face to face, not on a list taped to a door or in a group text, because a list tells a sixteen year old he was never a person to you, just a name. Give him something he can actually use instead of hiding behind roster numbers, and then hold the door open by telling him when open gym is and that you want to see him there. And watch what gets said about him in the coaches office afterward, because if a kid is disposable in your office, your players will feel it on the floor.

The episode also asks the harder question underneath all of it: do you have to cut at all? Rosters have limits and gyms have limits, and sometimes the answer is yes. But Coach Collins pushes coaches to think carefully about the junior who works, will never start, and loves the program, because sometimes that kid is the culture, and a roster spot is the cheapest investment a coach will ever make. When the answer really is no, the rule is simple: make sure the reason is basketball, and make sure you can say it out loud to his mother.

It closes with a practical assignment. Before tryouts begin, write down the exact criteria you are evaluating, and write down the first sentence you will say when a kid sits down and it is bad news. Write it while you are calm, because you will not find the right words in the moment, and that kid will carry the wrong ones for twenty years.

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Coaches spend October on the players. Conditioning, open gyms, skill work, the schedule, the gear order. Then they walk into November assuming the three or four adults on the bench are on the same page. In this episode Coach Collins argues that assumption is where a lot of seasons quietly go wrong, and that staff alignment is something you have to build on purpose before the first practice.

The test he offers is simple. Could each of your assistants, tonight, tell you the same three things your program is about? If the answer is no, your players already know it. Kids figure out staff division about nine days into a season.

The episode walks through how that division shows up in a gym. A player told to help down by one coach and stay home by another, so he stands still. A kid you just corrected hard, quietly told by an assistant not to worry about you because you are in a mood. A parent who calls a specific assistant because everybody in town knows which coach is the soft landing. None of that is a loyalty problem. Most assistants are good people trying to help. It is an alignment problem, and alignment does not happen by accident.

Coach Collins then lays out the preseason staff meeting he wants every head coach to run. Two hours, no phones, somewhere that is not the gym. It starts with a question rather than a speech: what are we actually about this year? He is candid that he got this wrong for years by walking in and announcing the vision, which is not alignment, it is a memo. People do not defend a plan they had no hand in building.

The meeting produces three specific things. Three non negotiables chosen together, not twelve, because assistants who helped pick them will enforce them when the head coach is not looking. A real job for every coach, not a title, because an assistant with no ownership becomes a spectator and eventually a critic. And a stated rule for how to disagree with the head coach, because if you never tell a coach how to push back on you, he will do it sideways, to a parent or a player or in the parking lot. The episode adds one more step most head coaches skip: ask each assistant what he wants out of this season for himself, because developing a future head coach and developing a lifelong assistant are not the same job.

The takeaway is uncomfortable and clarifying at the same time. Your team will never be more unified than your staff is, so build the bench before you build the roster.

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This episode is for the fall coaches. Soccer, volleyball, cross country, football, tennis. You are two or three weeks from the end, some chasing a conference title, some chasing a winning record, and some, honestly, just chasing the finish line. Coach Collins argues that this stretch is the part of the year most of us coach the worst.

The reason is simple. By mid October coaches are tired. The energy from August is gone, and the mind has already drifted to next year, to who is graduating, to the meeting with the athletic director, to the other sport that starts in three weeks. Players feel every bit of that, and a coach who has mentally moved on teaches his team that the season stopped mattering.

The core idea is that how you finish is what they remember. Nobody remembers the middle of September. Players remember the last two weeks and the last conversation, and that is what they carry out the door and repeat to the younger kids all winter.

Coach Collins offers four ways to finish on purpose. Give the team something to chase that is not the record, because a team with nothing to chase quits quietly in the third quarter rather than loudly. Get to the seniors before the last day instead of waiting for the banquet, and tell each one not what his stats were but what is different about the program because he walked through it. Finish the standards rather than letting the late kid, the loafing rep, and the sloppy drill slide, because a standard dropped in the last two weeks is one you will spend all next August rebuilding, and kids never forget which rules had an expiration date. And protect the ending, because if the last game goes badly, that locker room is a leadership moment, not a venting moment. Correct on Monday. Care on Friday.

The episode closes with three things to do this week: name something worth chasing for the last two weeks, talk to every senior individually before it ends, and pick the one standard you refuse to let slide on the way out. Every season ends, and a coach gets no say in that. What he does get a say in is whether it ends well, because a team that finishes well becomes a program that starts well.

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What happens to your team when the head coach has a bad day?

In this episode, Coach Collins takes a deep dive into one of the most important responsibilities of leadership: managing the emotional temperature of your program. Coaches often spend enormous amounts of time thinking about strategy, practice planning, player development, and culture. But players and assistant coaches are also constantly reading something else—the emotional state of the person leading them.

Coach Collins uses the idea of the thermostat versus the thermometer to explain the difference. A thermometer simply reflects the temperature around it. A thermostat helps set it. Athletes naturally react to what is happening around them. Coaches have a greater responsibility. Their frustration, confidence, fear, patience, body language, and emotional consistency can quickly spread throughout a team.

This becomes especially important when circumstances change quickly. Winning streaks, great practices, injuries, difficult losses, parent problems, player issues, staff disagreements, and unexpected setbacks can all happen within days of each other. If a coach’s emotional state rises and falls with every event, players begin experiencing leadership whiplash.

The episode explores the idea that every coach has a leadership range. At the top end, coaches are clear, proactive, relational, confident, and able to see the big picture. At their baseline, they are steady and dependable. At the low end, fatigue and frustration can lead to emotional reactions, micromanaging, distance, impatience, or poor communication.

The goal is not to pretend that great leaders never reach their low end. They do. The goal is to raise the floor.

How do you behave when things go badly? Can you lose and still communicate clearly? Can you receive difficult news without bringing panic into the gym? Can you correct a player without turning your frustration into that athlete’s shame? Can your assistant coaches concentrate on coaching instead of trying to figure out what mood you are in?

Those questions reveal a great deal about leadership.

Coach Collins also challenges coaches to separate their identity from the scoreboard. Winning matters. Competition matters. Championships matter. But when a coach needs winning to validate who they are, the entire culture begins riding the emotional roller coaster with them. A great night means everything is wonderful. One loss suddenly makes everything feel broken.

That is not stability.

Great programs need leaders who can compete intensely while remaining grounded through both success and adversity.

The episode gives coaches three practical questions for evaluating themselves: Did I act as the thermostat or the thermometer this week? What did my low end cost the people around me? And what boundary can I create to protect my emotional baseline next week?

Sometimes that boundary is waiting before speaking after a difficult loss. Sometimes it is refusing to send the emotional text. Sometimes it is sleep, time away, perspective, or simply recognizing that an important decision should not be made while angry.

For coaches trying to build sustainable culture, this episode is a reminder that your emotional regulation is not just personal. It becomes organizational.

Players feel it.

Assistant coaches feel it.

Your program eventually reflects it.

The scoreboard can change your circumstances. It does not have to change your leadership.

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Performance equals potential minus interference. That one equation, borrowed from Timothy Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis, is the spine of this episode, and it flips the way most coaches think about player development. Nearly all of our energy goes into the first half of that equation. Better drills, better lifts, better skill work, better film. But Coach Collins argues that some of the biggest breakthroughs in a season do not come from adding anything at all. They come from removing what is standing in front of a kid.

The episode opens with a player every coach knows. Terrific on Tuesday, unrecognizable on Friday. His ability did not vanish between those two days. Something got in front of it. Coach Collins walks through why the interference we go looking for is usually external, the crowd, the refs, the matchup, when the loudest interference is almost always internal. Fear of failing. Fear of looking foolish in front of friends. Overthinking. Trying to prove something to someone in the stands. Playing to protect a stat line instead of playing to compete. That is not a skill problem, and it does not respond to skill answers.

Then comes the uncomfortable part of the conversation. Sometimes the coach is the interference. A player struggles, so he gets a cue, then another cue, then a correction and one more reminder on his way out of the huddle. Now he is standing at the free throw line running six voices at once, and none of them are his own. Coach Collins makes the case that our job is not to fill a player's head. It is to free it.

From there the episode turns to a simple change in the question we ask. Instead of what does he need to learn, try what is getting in the way of what he already knows. One question assumes the player is missing something. The other assumes he has more inside him than he can currently reach, and those two questions build two completely different practices.

Coach Collins also connects the idea to culture, because programs manufacture their own interference. Unclear roles create it. A coach who runs hot and cold creates it. Mistakes punished in public create it. When a player is calculating what failure will cost him, he is protecting rather than competing, and gyms where kids play free are never an accident.

The episode closes with a challenge coaches can run this week. Pick one player, write down one thing you are going to take away rather than add, then audit your own practice for the fog you may be putting in front of your team. This is an episode for coaches who have been trying to add their way to better and are ready to try subtracting instead.

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How quickly can one basketball game become an entire story in an athlete’s mind?

A player has a great opening night and thinks, “This is finally my year.” Another struggles and immediately thinks, “Here we go again.” A player gets fewer minutes than expected and decides the coach no longer believes in them. A teammate has a breakout game and suddenly someone else begins wondering whether they are falling behind.

In this episode, Coach Collins explores one of the most important mental-performance lessons athletes and coaches can learn: one game is evidence, not a conclusion.

The problem is not that athletes have emotions after competition. That is completely normal. The problem begins when those emotions start creating conclusions that the available evidence does not actually support. One poor shooting night becomes “I’m not a good shooter.” One turnover becomes “I can’t handle pressure.” One change in playing time becomes “Coach doesn’t trust me.”

Coach Collins explains why athletes need to learn the difference between what actually happened and the story they are telling themselves about what happened.

Those are two very different things.

This episode introduces a simple method athletes can use following games. Create two lists. On the first, write only the facts of the performance: minutes played, shots taken, defensive communication, turnovers, effort, body language, and specific moments. On the second, write the interpretations your mind immediately wants to create.

Seeing those two lists next to each other can be powerful.

The first contains evidence.

The second contains a story.

Coach Collins also challenges athletes to approach performance more like scientists. Good scientists do not perform one experiment and immediately announce a conclusion. They gather information, look for patterns, remain curious, make adjustments, and continue testing.

Athletes can do the same thing.

Instead of asking, “What does this performance say about me?” ask, “What is this performance teaching me?”

One question pushes athletes toward identity and judgment. The other pushes them toward curiosity, development, and growth.

And this lesson matters after great games too. Athletes can become just as trapped by positive conclusions as negative ones. One great performance does not mean everything is solved. Celebrate it, enjoy it, and then study what created it so those behaviors can be repeated.

For coaches, the message is equally important. Our reactions help determine the story athletes attach to their performances. Correct mistakes. Hold standards. Teach the game. But do not allow one performance to become an athlete’s identity.

A season is long.

Roles change.

Players develop.

Confidence moves up and down.

There will be great nights and difficult ones.

The athletes who continue to improve are usually the ones who remain curious long enough to learn from all of them.

One performance should never tell an athlete who they are. It should tell them what they can learn next.

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My kids do not play hard. It might be the oldest complaint in coaching, and in this episode Coach Collins argues that most coaches are diagnosing it wrong. When a team does not play hard, we tend to treat it like a character problem. That kid is lazy. This group is soft. But playing hard is not a personality trait. It is a standard, and standards have to be taught, defined, and celebrated just like any skill in the game.

The episode starts with a revealing test: if you asked five of your players what playing hard means in your program, would you get the same answer five times? The phrase play harder is not coachable because a kid cannot hit a standard he cannot see. Coach Collins walks through how to turn effort into visible, countable behaviors, things like sprinting the floor both directions, chasing every loose ball to the deck, sprinting to huddles, and picking teammates up off the floor. When effort becomes a checklist instead of a mood, a player can win the night even when his shot is broken.

From there, the conversation turns to what coaches celebrate. Whatever you celebrate is whatever you grow, and your team learns what you really value from the first clip in your film session, not from the slogans on your practice shirts. Coach Collins explains why the first clip should be a charge or a deflection, why charting hustle plays changes behavior, and why every team plays hard at the things the coach counts.

The episode also gets to the heart of effort: connection and clarity. Kids do not play hard for programs. They play hard for people. A player empties the tank when he trusts his coach and cannot stand the thought of letting his teammates down, and that trust is built in the hallway and on his worst days, long before the season starts. Role clarity matters just as much, because a confused player looks lazy, and a kid who does not know how his effort helps the team will never sell out for it.

Finally, Coach Collins asks coaches to look in the mirror. Long lines and long speeches kill effort, standing around teaches standing around, and a standard your star does not have to meet is not a standard at all. The episode closes with a practical challenge: write out five visible behaviors that define playing hard in your program, then teach them the way you would teach a press break. Name them, rep them, track them, and celebrate them.

This is an episode for coaches who are tired of begging for effort in February and ready to start teaching it in August.

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Long Show Notes

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Where does real improvement begin? Most athletes immediately think about more workouts, more shots, more film, more confidence, or becoming mentally tougher. But in this episode, Coach Collins argues that development starts somewhere much simpler and much more difficult: seeing yourself honestly.

This episode takes a deep dive into self-awareness and why athletes cannot improve from the person they wish they were. They have to begin with who they actually are today. That means understanding what happens when pressure rises, what causes confidence to disappear, what triggers frustration, when body language changes, and what allows an athlete to compete at their best.

Coach Collins explores an important difference between judging performance and evaluating performance. Statements like “I’m not clutch,” “I’m not mentally tough,” or “I’m just bad under pressure” sound like evaluation, but they are really verdicts. Verdicts close the door on improvement. Better questions open it: What happened? What changed? When did I begin to drift? What was I feeling? What did I do next?

This episode also challenges coaches to rethink their role in developing the mental side of athletes. Coaches are naturally problem solvers, but constantly giving athletes every answer can accidentally create dependence. Great coaching also means teaching players how to recognize problems, evaluate their own responses, reset during competition, and make adjustments when the coach cannot solve the problem for them.

One of the key messages is that a snapshot is not a sentence. Where an athlete is mentally today does not define where they will be tomorrow. Struggling with confidence does not make someone an unconfident person. Feeling fear does not make an athlete weak. One difficult performance should never become a verdict about identity.

Coach Collins gives athletes three questions to begin building greater self-awareness: What surprised you about your performance? What area would have the greatest impact if it improved? What will you intentionally pay attention to this week? These simple questions move athletes away from labeling themselves and toward learning about themselves.

For coaches trying to develop mentally strong, confident, resilient athletes, this episode is a reminder that awareness comes before improvement. Before athletes can change their response to pressure, they have to recognize it. Before they can control their drift, they have to notice it. Before they can grow, they have to have the courage to see themselves clearly.

Real growth does not begin with pretending you are already where you want to be. It begins with honestly understanding where you are today.

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