8 Leadership Lessons from 8 Years of Coaching Sports

I just completed my eighth season of coaching field hockey at the small Christian school that I attended growing up; I have spent three years as the middle school coach and five years as the varsity head coach. When I was asked to take the position, I called up my old coach to ask her if I should do it. Her response was, “I couldn’t possibly come up with a reason that you shouldn’t do it. It is so much fun!” And it has been so much fun, but I also learned a lot of leadership lessons along the way. Here are eight of them.

1. “Fake it till you make it” (aka seek lots of advice and wear a hat that says “coach”).

I was only 23 when I started coaching, and I quickly learned the art of “fake it until you make it” – or in my case, ask for help until you have learned how to do it. The only way I made it through those early years was asking my old coach for help with not only planning the practices but also when issues came up with players or parents. Additionally, when I started coaching the high school team, there were countless times that referees and coaches walked up to my older assistants expecting them to be the head coach. I learned to walk up to them first and introduce myself before they could make the mistake of thinking I was a player. (And at the end of that year, my team gifted me with a hat that said “coach” which completely solved that problem.)

2. Expect the unexpected, no matter how long you have been doing it.

With a smaller team, I had to learn how to be flexible and how to help my players adapt quickly. Players would tell me they were sick last minute which meant I would have to change my lineup on the fly. There were years we didn’t have a goalie and had to rotate other field players through that position. And when I finally thought I had seen it all, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and completely turned our season upside down.

I realized that if I held anything too tightly, I would be devastated when it didn’t turn out. But once I learned to expect the unexpected, I was able to take the upsets in stride and calmly come up with a new plan – and it almost became fun to try and solve the new challenge ahead of me.

3. You may be “as strong as your weakest player,” but having a standout leader in a key position will make a huge difference.

They say you are as strong as your weakest player, but I learned that if you have strong leaders in your key positions, they will help your weaker team members play up to their highest potential. In field hockey, the center midfield is one of the most important positions. As long as I had a player in that position who had strong skills, was good at communicating, and was playing for the whole team rather than herself, everyone else on the team would follow her lead and work together to play great hockey.

And notice I didn’t say the center midfield had to just be an amazingly skilled player – I always tell my team I would rather coach a group of players with skill, hard work, and integrity than a team of self-focused superstars.

4. Every goal is a team goal, including those on the bench.

I’ve had players say to me, “I want to score a lot of goals this season!” And I always remind them that although this is a great thing to aspire to and we need goals to win, it’s also important to recognize that the only reason they can score is because every single person on the team did their job. As the leader, you can see the bigger picture much more easily than the players can, how even down to the players on the bench cheering for their team led to the team being able to pass the ball all the way up the field and into the goal.

5. Play for a bigger value and recognize the small wins.

We are a small team from a small school going up against opponents with far more students and resources. If our only goal was to win a game, we would be disappointed often. So, we do two things:

1. We recognize the small wins. Before games, I ask my players to create personal goals and team goals about specific skills we want to improve on.

2. We play for something bigger than ourselves. As a Christian school, our goal is to use the gifts God has given us to play excellent field hockey and to show God’s love to others in our actions. We call it playing with grit and grace.

By doing both of these, we can walk away from a loss feeling great about the effort that we put out.

6. You are the advocate for your team, and they need to trust you to have their back.

Some people are sneaky. I’ve encountered players, coaches, and even referees who either acted kind to my face and then pulled off something outside of the rules or were just straight-up mean. As the leader, I needed to quickly learn the difference between situations where I was able to advocate for my team and other times when I just needed to encourage my team where they were at because there was nothing we could do. These are hard lessons to learn yourself and even harder to teach to others, but they will serve them well in the future.

7. Make it fun!

Word of mouth is the best recruiting – for players, employees, or customers. If you have a desirable culture, others will want to be part of what you are doing. Create traditions or practices that bond the team together. A 4-mile run is not fun for most people. But when it becomes tradition to run it in the very first practice, it bonds the team by creating a common enemy! Other traditions my team has include the seniors running a fun practice, saying our team mantra at the end of every day, stopping at Chick-fil-a on the way home from games, and belting out Taylor Swift songs on the bus ride. The softball coach humorously told me that some of our shared players were thinking of not playing softball in the spring because it isn’t “the field hockey team.”

8. Remember that for every hard time you experience as a leader, there will be so many more bright moments.

Coaching is hard. Physically it is hard because my days are much longer as I do this on top of working full-time. Mentally it is hard to be responsible for 17 different students. Emotionally it is hard because I don’t want to disappoint anyone. But there are so many more moments that remind me why this season is my favorite time of year. Like watching a freshman grow from being a timid underclassman to scoring a goal for the team. Or watching two sophomores give up half of their season playing on the field to fill in as the goalie so that they can help the team. Or having the team put their own gift basket together for you off-season when you lose a loved one. Or seeing a group of underdogs pull off an overtime win. When you hit a tough spot, remind yourself that you can do hard things for a period of time and look for the bright spots. Your team will surprise you in the ways they step up for you and each other.

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Tiehl Haverstick graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Relations from Taylor University and has experience as a writing intern for a community foundation. As The Center Consulting Group’s Director of Communications, she manages the database, website, social media, marketing and special projects.