Reply To: Player confidence

[Kat Nichols]

Hey Mike,

I am was in a situation with one of my players. Come to find out she was receiving a lot of outside pressure from parents to be the leading goal scorer and she felt as if she did not score she not only was letting her team down but felt like she was going to get in trouble as soon as she got in the car after a game. I’ve come to learn that my players do not really talk about the outside pressure they are feeling they just kind of hold it in then when things like missing good chance come into play their confidence drops. What has worked for me is pulling a player aside and talking with them one on one about things going on. Asking them what they need from me to help them, how can i support them better, and see what is really going on and help them try and work through it. For my player I actually ended up moving her position (from the 9 to the 7) and giving her 3 things to focus on before every game and slowly her confidence has started to rebuild, then I moved her slowly back into her normal place still giving her 3 things to focus on doing during games, it has seemed to be working.