CLA: Communication Part 2

How communication can shut down parts of the solution space, and parts of who players 'are'

Don’t take the street out of the dog.

Coaches break this rule.

Coaches make players worse with the use of limiting communication.

Example?

Sure. Watch this:

The indigenous creators of lacrosse referred to the game as a ‘medicine game’. Playing the sport as healing.

To the spiritually aware, play is healing. They knew this. Most sports parents are ignorant to that, just look what we’ve turned sport into…

Drew, communication… Stay focused.

Drew tried to score and create scoring chances through passing as a kid.

Drew was open to a higher percentage of the solution space than his coaches thought he was capable of because he played street hockey 4 hours a day with his neighbors.

Drew could pass behind his back not because it was fancy, but because it was ‘there’.

Drew could make a Brennan O’Neill one-handed catch in the slot if he had to.

But, big but…

If Drew didn’t score on the ‘fancy shot’ that happened to emerge, Drew would get yelled at in his club practices with the adults presenting as ‘leaders’. As a kid, it limited me in the moment, maybe the rest of the game. I’d listen to my coach and ‘keep it simpler’. By college I stopped limiting myself, I stopped listening to that energy.

As a college player, I just kept making the plays I thought were there until I got benched and scratched. I’d rather play like the street kid than be someone I wasn’t.

That choice cost me a lot of games played.

When the goal goes in, coaches used to ‘result’. It was no problem. I didn’t get benched. I got to keep playing.

When the goal doesn’t go in, you’re told to ‘limit who you are’ and ‘be less than you can be.’ That’s the message. What you did doesn’t look like the neat, orderly moves they taught you in practice. What they don’t know is if they stopped practicing this way, they’d see more passes get caught like Brennan had to, more behind the back because the game moment called for it. They’d see more plays and less patterns.

The game isn’t played how they want it practiced. So the players often have to go outside the box because the game calls for solutions that work against defenders, not solutions that work on cones.

“Stay in a smaller solution space or risk playing the game you love.”

That’s the implied message from the Force Coach.

Don’t be that guy.

Deter or shut down parts of the solution space with your limiting communication and we’ll be sure to have less Goals of the Year to marvel at.

Keep your communication beautiful to keep the game beautiful.