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Teaching Teamwork Skills In Youth Sports

CoachesEducators

By Emilee Bounds and Tim Baghurst Oklahoma State University

Girls rugby team huddle in black and white.The ability to function and collaborate within a team setting requires a multidimensional skill set that is beneficial at all stages of life. Therefore, teaching teamwork to young people can help them develop skills at an early age that they will use forever.

Youth sports provide the perfect opportunities for young people to acquire and develop these skills.

 

Six Ways To Develop Teamwork Skills In Youth Sports

Cohesion is a term often used to describe how a group bonds together toward a common goal. But it requires more than just glue for a group to stick. Skills like leadership, hard work, communication, conflict resolution, self-discipline, and accountability are also necessary for a group to work together successfully.

Here are a few pointers on how to encourage teamwork with your athlete or team:

  1. Leadership means learning to lead others as well as learning to follow those who lead. While a team may have a well-defined captain, leadership roles should be fluid with players stepping in and out of them depending on the game situation.
  2. Hard work is essential to the success of the group. While performance may vary, effort should remain constant. Remember that there is no such thing as giving 110%. Everyone giving 100% would be more than enough!
  3. Communication is the key to successful teamwork. Strong communication makes it possible for the team to know the strategy, what is coming next, how to correct an error, and how to praise success. Develop ways to strengthen communication throughout your team rather than just hoping that players talk to each other.
  4. A disagreement with a coach or teammate, miscommunications, and differences in personalities all require certain conflict resolution skills. Being around adults modeling these skills and gaining first-hand experience with resolving conflict helps young adults mature. Parents and coaches should use these opportunities to help develop communication and resolution skills rather than “taking care of it” themselves.
  5. Being internally motivated to achieve something as opposed to being motivated by something external like a medal molds self-discipline in a young athlete. As a parent or coach, try and facilitate this discipline by praising internal values (e.g., it feels good, a skill was learned, their best was given) over the external ones.
  6. With teamwork comes accountability, and team members are accountable to each other for their actions, effort, and performance. While performance may vary, actions and effort are all within the control of the young person. A collaborative environment typically keeps behavior positive. If these behaviors shift negatively, the team is there to hold each other accountable.

Why Teamwork In Youth Sports Is So Important

Youth sports allow young people to learn teamwork at an early age and experience succeed-or-fail situations in a safe environment. With each failure comes a lesson, and with every success comes confidence.

But teamwork skills are not only useful at the gym or on the field. They are always being used in all aspects of life, whether personal or professional. Who hasn’t had to work in a group for a school or work project?

With coaches like bosses, teammates as coworkers, the game as the job, and a position as the player’s role, youth sports provide an age-appropriate challenge and environment to develop teamwork skills in a fun and enjoyable way.

In addition to healthy physical activity and camaraderie, sports provide youth athletes opportunities to learn life lessons and what it means to be part of something greater than themselves. Through sports, your child will not only learn about teamwork, they will learn the skills necessary to foster it.

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Hi. I’m Trevon, Trey, Jennifer. Team USA wheelchair basketball player, paralympian, and true sport athlete. Today, I want to talk to you about goal setting. And there are three things that I would like you to know. First, successful athletes set goals and a planned roadmap. Second, goals should be written down, assessed over time, and changed if necessary. And third, goals need to be challenging in order to be worthwhile. As a freshmen at Edinboro University, I was a part of a team that made the national championship game. And at that time I recognized I was the low man on the totem pole, but I felt in my heart that I knew my dreams were so much bigger than winning a national title. I wanted to make Team USA. I knew what achieving my lofty goal was not going to be easy and that I would need to work hard every day.

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By understanding that there are smaller stepping stones to achieving my ultimate goal of being on Team USA, I was able to stay motivated and to stay focused on completing the smaller stepping stones fully before moving onto the next one. Now I’ll be the first to admit that not every goal that I listed on my pyramid was accomplished, but seeing my goals every day when I went to bed, I was able to push through the days that I felt like doing nothing in hopes of achieving the bigger picture. Remember, create a clear goal roadmap, assess your goals often, and continue to challenge yourself. I hope that you never stopped dreaming big or reaching for the stars. And I look forward to seeing where your roadmap takes you.

Body Image Lesson Video Transcript

Hi, I’m Kara Winger, Olympic javelin thrower, and true sport athlete. Today I want to talk to you about body image and I have three things I’d like you to know. First, healthy thoughts often lead to healthier bodies. Second, there are varying body types and no one’s body is exactly like another. And third, true beauty goes deeper than the skin. As a multi-time Olympian, I’ve experienced a lot of variation and progression in my training. My coaches and I adapt to my training frequently, all with the goal of supporting my long-term success and health in the sport of javelin. I’m talking to you about body image today because sometimes even with the best of intentions and a common goal in mind, the changes you make to your training habits can prove to be detrimental if made for the wrong reasons. In the lead up to the 2012 Olympic trials, I was told in order to improve my performance on the field, I should try to become a leaner, skinnier version of myself.

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A Good Sport Lesson Video Transcript

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I believe that sportsmanship reveals true character. So, no matter what situation I encounter during competition, I know it’s important to always treat people with respect and be a good sport. Remember, be a fierce competitor, find grace in all your victories and losses. And I hope to see you out there.

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Edwin Moses: You’re a coach. Maybe what you want is very simple, for everyone to just run in the right direction, score for their own team, to try and try again and again. Maybe you want your athletes to become all stars. You want them to earn trophies, medals, win titles. You want them to reach the highest height their sport allows. And wanting all of that, of course, that’s good. But as every great coach discovers, developing a great athlete means nurturing, nurturing the even greater person within. Truth is, you have even more influence than you know.

You have the ability to affect even deeper change, to take what’s in your hands and do something even more extraordinary. You can be both the coach who provides the skills needed to win the game and the coach who helps them learn and succeed beyond the sport, to become all stars wherever they land in the future, and to enjoy their lives more now, because the confidence and courage they find working with you will stay with them when they need it the most. There are games to be won, lives to change. Coaches have the power to do both.

I’m Edwin Moses, and the lessons I’ve learned through sport have challenged me, guided me, and shaped my life forever. What kind of coach do you want to be?

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At first glance, dietary supplements look the same. They seem safe and healthy, but just because the label says a product is a dietary supplement, that doesn’t mean it’s safe. Unfortunately, you can’t tell whether a product is safe or not just by looking at the label. Most vitamins, minerals, fish oil, and other supplements containing nutrients are probably just fine, but supplements are not evaluated or approved by FDA before they are sold. Although it is rare for vitamins or minerals to be contaminated with drugs, there has been at least one case of a vitamin containing an anabolic steroid.

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Even when FDA tests supplements and finds dangerous ingredients, companies sometimes refuse to recall them. Sometimes, they simply repackage their product and continue selling it under a new name. Just because a product is on a store shelf doesn’t mean it is safe. You need to do your research and be an informed consumer. The dietary supplement industry is enormous. Supplements that appear to be safe could actually be dangerous products in disguise. If you use dietary supplements without doing your research, you may be taking serious risks with your health and your career. Please visit USADA’s Supplement 411 for more information about dietary supplements.