Sport-Specific Contexts
You feel like the coach doesn’t like you.
Maybe you’re right. Coaches are human beings, and human beings have preferences and biases and histories that show up in how they treat the people they lead. It’s possible the coaching relationship you’re in is genuinely difficult and not entirely in your imagination.
So let’s talk about what you actually do with that — not what you wish the situation were, but what you do with the situation as it actually is.
Read this passage slowly.
Whoever heeds life-giving correction will be at home among the wise. Those who disregard discipline despise themselves, but the one who heeds correction gains understanding.
Proverbs 15:31–32 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
Whoever heeds correction gains understanding. The instruction doesn’t say: heed correction only when it is delivered with perfect fairness. It says: heed it. The correction that arrives with bias or frustration or a coaching style that grates against your personality still often contains something true. The player who filters out all feedback from a coach they’ve decided doesn’t like them is filtering out the thing that could actually make them better.
Two things can be true at the same time. The coaching relationship can be genuinely difficult — unfair, inconsistent, personal in ways it shouldn’t be — and the correction can still have something worth hearing in it. Your job is to separate the two. Take the useful information. Don’t take the unfair personal treatment as a verdict on who you are.
What you cannot do is let the difficult relationship become an excuse for not developing. The player who coasts on the justification that the coach has it out for them is the player who comes out the other side of the situation smaller than they went in. The player who competes fully in spite of the relationship — who refuses to let the coach’s attitude toward them determine the quality of their effort — comes out larger.
Don’t let anyone else’s opinion of you set the ceiling on your development. Especially not someone who might be wrong.
Two things can be true. The coaching relationship can be unfair and the correction can still contain something worth hearing. Your job is to separate the two.
What feedback have you been dismissing from this coach because of how it was delivered? Is there anything in it that is actually true?
Challenging question that requires honesty. Create safety before asking it.
Don’t let anyone else’s opinion of you set the ceiling on your development.
This devotional is almost always better delivered individually or in a very small group. Full-team delivery can inadvertently target the coaching staff in a way that creates problems.
This devotional validates the difficulty of the situation without providing a platform for grievance. Keep the focus on the player’s response, not the coach’s behavior.