Coaches & Leadership
Your best player just entered the portal.
Or one of them. The player you built the offense around, or the one who was going to anchor the defense, or the one the locker room looked to when things got hard. They are gone, or in the process of leaving, and you have to figure out how to hold the personal dimension of that and the programmatic dimension of it at the same time.
Read this passage slowly.
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit — fruit that will last.
John 15:16 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
I chose you and appointed you so that you might bear fruit. The appointment is not rescinded by the departure of a key player. The calling to build something lasting does not depend on a specific roster configuration. But that truth does not remove the immediate sting of the loss, and it is worth sitting in the sting honestly before reaching for the framework.
The transfer portal has changed the emotional landscape of coaching in a specific way. The relationship between a coach and a player that used to carry a four-year horizon now carries an ambiguity that can activate at any point. The emotional investment coaches make in player development — the time, the personal relationship, the genuine care for the athlete as a person — is now made against the backdrop of the real possibility that the player will not complete the investment on your program’s timeline.
The coach who responds to that reality by reducing their emotional investment in players — by holding athletes at arm’s length to protect against the portal departure — has let the portal damage the coaching relationship it was designed to provide athletes more flexibility in. The better response is harder: continue to invest fully, knowing that the investment may not complete in your program, and trust that the genuine development you provide is valuable regardless of where the player continues it.
Your best player entering the portal is a loss. It is also not the end of what you are building. Both things are true.
The coach who reduces emotional investment to protect against portal departures has let the portal damage the coaching relationship. Invest fully. The development you provide is valuable wherever it continues.
What specifically did you invest in this player that the portal departure is making you reconsider? Is that reconsideration actually in the interest of the athletes who are still here?
Honest and sharp. The reconsideration question is the key diagnostic for how the loss is affecting the broader coaching posture.
The loss is real. The building continues. Both things are true.
This devotional is for the coach, not for the team. The team needs a different conversation about the departure — this one is for the coach’s own processing.