Communicate Clearly (Assume Nothing)

A few years back I was coaching a football team of 4th and 5th graders.  With kids that age, I was allowed to be on the field while we were on offense and we were having a tough time running a particular play.  After the second time we got stuffed in the backfield I realized our left tackle was blocking the wrong defender.  There was no down lineman across from him, and rather than go to the second level and handle the linebacker, he was going to a double team with our guard.  This left a big gap and the backer came through easily and made the play.

So I went to fix the problem.  I pulled our tackle aside and told him to block the linebacker.  He nodded and said, “OK”.  I called the same play one more time, confident it would work perfectly.  As the ball was snapped I looked at our tackle.  He once again double teamed a lineman and the linebacker once again came through and stopped our back for no gain.  What the heck was going on?  I talked to our tackle again and started to ask him what he was thinking/doing, and then I had an idea.  I asked, “Do you know what a linebacker is?”  He shook his head.  How was that possible?  How was it that a 10 year old offensive tackle doesn’t know who the other team’s linebackers are?  It really didn’t matter in that moment, the fact was that he didn’t know and it took all of 2 seconds to fix the problem.  For the rest of the game, our kid handled that linebacker with no problem.

I heard one the other day from a basketball coach who was talking to his team during a timeout.  He was preparing his group to defend an inbound play from under the basket.  He told one player that he was confident the shot would be taken from the elbow, so she was to be sure and defend the elbow.  He proceeded to look on in disbelief as his defender guarded the inbound pass on the baseline, paying no attention to the elbow, where the shooter caught the pass and knocked down the shot.  Later he asked her the question, “Do you know what the elbow is?”  She nodded and pointed to her arm.

You might have a similar story.  When we coach these sports we get so comfortable and familiar with the lingo of the game, that it’s easy to forget that these players usually don’t know what we know.  I’ve been around some coaches who seem to be just as interested in showing off their vocabulary as they are helping kids learn to play.  My rule of thumb has become to never assume a player knows what something means unless I have taught him/her first.