When Your Coach Doesn’t Believe in You

This one is hard to talk about. But I’ve been in enough locker rooms to know it’s real, and I’d rather talk about it here than let you carry it alone.

Some of you are in a situation where the coach — the person who is supposed to be in your corner, the person whose belief in you is supposed to help you become what you’re capable of — doesn’t seem to believe in you. Maybe they never did. Maybe they recruited the person they thought you were and the person you actually are disappointed them. Maybe you got here and the program needed something different than what you bring. Maybe it’s politics. Maybe it’s a personality thing that has nothing to do with your talent.

It doesn’t really matter why. The experience is the same: you are working, you are competing, you are trying — and the person with the most power over your playing time and your development is not fully invested in you.

That is a real thing. And it is one of the most difficult situations you can be in as a college athlete.

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

I want to be honest with you about three things before I get to the scripture.

First: sometimes the player thinks the coach doesn’t believe in them and the coach is actually trying to develop them in a way the player isn’t recognizing yet. Hard coaching is not the same as disbelief. So before you settle into this situation, make sure you’ve been honest with yourself about what’s actually happening. Have you had a direct conversation with the coach about your role and their expectations? If not, that’s the first step, always.

Second: sometimes the situation is genuinely unfair. Coaches are human beings and they are not always right and they do not always make decisions based purely on merit. If you are in a genuinely unfair situation — where the evidence is clear that the coach’s investment in you is not proportional to what you are bringing — that is a real problem and it deserves to be named as one.

Third: even in a genuinely unfair situation, you still have to decide what to do with your effort.

Paul’s instruction in Colossians is the hardest and most useful thing I know for this situation. Work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters. What Paul is saying is that the human master — the coach, the evaluator, the person whose opinion of you determines your playing time — is not the ultimate audience for your work. God is.

I know that can sound like a way of spiritually bypassing a real injustice. I don’t mean it that way. What I mean is this: the player who reduces their effort and investment because the coach isn’t watching or doesn’t care has given the coach’s opinion power over something the coach shouldn’t have power over. Your work ethic. Your character in the room. The investment you bring to your development regardless of whether anyone in a position of authority is crediting it.

The players I’ve seen handle this situation well are the ones who found their audience somewhere other than the coach. They were working for something larger than the coach’s approval. And often — not always, but often — that consistent investment eventually produces something even the doubtful coach has to respond to.

If it doesn’t, and if the situation is genuinely without a path forward, then the transfer conversation is a legitimate one and it doesn’t mean you failed. But have the direct conversation first. Work as if for the Lord first. Give it the full honest effort before you decide the situation can’t change.

This question often reveals that the direct conversation hasn’t happened. That is usually the first step before anything else.