Team Chemistry
What you post is not just about you.
You are a member of this team. This team has a name, a community, a reputation that belongs to more people than just you. And when you put something into the world under the identity of a person who plays for this program, it says something about this program — whether or not you intended it to.
Read this passage slowly.
But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.
Matthew 12:36 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
Everyone will have to give account for every empty word. The internet has not changed the accountability that has always existed for what people say. It has changed the permanence and the reach. The empty word that would once have been heard by the people in the immediate vicinity is now visible to everyone who follows you, everyone who follows them, the recruiting service that is evaluating your program, the opponent who is looking for psychological material, and the screenshot that will exist permanently regardless of whether you delete the post.
This is not a lecture about social media being bad. It is a conversation about the team dimension of individual choices. Every person in this room made a choice to be part of something larger than themselves when they joined this program. That choice has a social media implication: how you represent yourself online is how you represent this team online, and this team’s online presence is built one player’s post at a time.
The question is not whether to use social media. The question is whether the version of yourself that exists online is the version that you want representing this team. Most athletes, when asked that question honestly, can identify the gap between those two things. Closing that gap is not censorship. It is character.
The question is not whether to use social media. It is whether the version of yourself that exists online is the version you want representing this team. Most athletes know the gap.
If the coach, the recruiting coordinator, and your parents could see your entire social media history from the last six months, would you be comfortable with what they saw? If not, what needs to change?
This question is intentionally direct. The honest answer is more useful than the comfortable one.
What you post represents more than yourself. Post accordingly.
Most useful early in the season before any incidents occur, as a proactive conversation rather than a reactive one.