work and repetition, the importance of listening, and how to recover quickly from the inevitable losses and tough feedback.
FOR ANY HIGH PERFORMER, it is the influence of family and community, the environment, coaches, and society that help instill the nine practices that eventually make success possible. But once you’ve made the team and started to meet, and exceed, expectations and gain momentum, you begin to realize that increasing levels of achievement require a deeper commitment. This leads you to the next point on our journey along the arc of transition.
TIME OUT: A SELF-INTERVIEW
Take a time out to consider the influence that the early part of your career had on you. For these, and for the “time out” questions in each chapter, you may want to jot down your answers in a journal or share them with a trusted support person.
•Think about your own story of starting out. Who were your early supporters, champions, and influencers? Who acted as your secure base and encouraged you to seek challenges, take risks, and explore alternatives?
•Consider who was most influential on you. What is the most important lesson you still carry with you today that you learned from that person?
•Early expectations of others can create early success. Did you feel expectations, and how did these (positively or negatively) influence your trajectory?
Chapter 2
All-In
“My grandfather gave me one dollar for every goal I scored. That made me happy, because I loved scoring goals, so I felt like I was going to be rich! And he gave me $1.50 for every assist. He helped me realize that being on a team means that other people are involved, and that it would be more rewarding for me to enhance or empower other people. That has stuck with me for forty years.”
—BRANDI CHASTAIN, SOCCER PLAYER
There comes a time in each athlete’s career when a bigger commitment is required and a decision is made to be all-in. This point on the arc is one of energy, excitement, and enthusiasm. As you improve and experience success, tougher benchmarks are set, and you tackle more challenging hurdles. Not all experiences are positive, however; some are downright tough. But as an achiever, you learn to ignite the attitude of “I will overcome the pitfalls and handle the intensity, and when I experience a failure, I will learn from it and keep moving toward my goals.” At this point on the arc, you deepen your connection with the nine practices and continue to gain knowledge about yourself. The desire is to succeed, and no matter what the discipline (athlete or not), being all-in is a stage all high performers can relate to.
Being accepted to the team feels wonderful. Perhaps the first time you made the team you gave an inward cheer for yourself: “Yes! I did it!” You may remember the ups and downs of being all-in, too. For young athletes who are at this point on the arc, one week it can seem as if the whole world is smiling on you. Parents congratulate, coaches encourage, teammates high five, friends and family cheer you on. The next week could be a completely different story with a different set of emotions, such as embarrassment, sorrow, or shame. At this phase, everyone invested in the athlete develops (and sometimes destroys) them. Adults who surround young high performers carry immense influence.
The shift from simply participating to being all-in differentiates the high-performing child from other children. Before I went to Pine Crest, I trained three times a week for forty-five minutes each session. Then, suddenly, my day started with training at 5:30 a.m. I had classes from eight in the morning to 2:30 in the afternoon, and then I jumped back in the pool before working out in the weight room until five in the evening. Throughout the day I squeezed in meals, and at night, I faced the academic demands of a prep school, toiling away at homework until I fell into bed. In my first year, I barely met the minimum standards to return. The training schedule repeated every day, all year long. I couldn’t skip it or sleep in. This positive but demanding environment meant I had to cultivate every single one of the nine practices. When I was at high school, I learned that being all-in is hardly a balanced lifestyle. It is a choice that must be made every day. Today, forty years later and far from the athletic environment that absorbed me then, when I set my sights on something, I know I have the capacity to achieve that goal because I understand what being all-in means and that it is still deeply ingrained in who I am.
THE PARENT–COACH SHIFT
As parents of young athletes watch them grow and flourish they gradually encourage more autonomy in the children, sensing their readiness for new-found freedoms and increasing responsibilities. At this point, children often invest a strong but naive belief in their coach. Even young athletes know that, to improve their performance, they must put their faith in the coach’s direction. Most parents don’t have experience with the demands of an intense, sport-focused environment, and they trust the coach implicitly. Over time, parents tend to abdicate part of their responsibility to these powerful influencers.
Once the rules and structures for the young athlete have been established, parents might pull back further by joining carpools. They begin to feel more secure about dropping their children off for practices and games without needing to stay and observe. As the athlete matures, the role of the coaches, and their control, intensifies. When parents see their child is improving as a result of the coach’s direction, they, unsurprisingly, come to trust that the coach will do what’s right for their child. This assumption can have long-lasting positive or, in some cases, negative effects.
Financial need also plays into the parent-coach shift. When their child has early success in sports, parents may develop unrealistic expectations that their child will be offered college scholarships or possibly enter a pro career. They might make grand assumptions that their kids will make it big, even when they’re in their early teens or younger. “This sport is not for the faint of heart, gymnasts and their parents said,” reports a CNN investigative article on gymnastics, “and they would often put up with abuse and hardship” to reach their Olympic goals:
“It’s a tough sport,” said Lisa Hutchins, a former Twistars mother and coach. “It takes tough parents and tough kids. The culture is toxic. To be the best, we believed kids need to be coached with a certain degree of threatening. [The coach] was really good at pitting parents against each other to keep it that way. He wanted control over what the parents and kids said or did. And if you stood up to him, your kid would pay.”
[He] was known for getting his gymnasts college scholarships, another way they say he exerted power over them.
“It’s hard to explain the pressure that [he] puts on you,” said [gymnast] Bailey. That college scholarship is everything.”1
Coaches know all too well that for many families, the only way their child will be able to go on to postsecondary education is with financial aid or a scholarship. Although representing a school is an athlete’s badge of honour, it can also be a backdoor admission to higher education. And an athlete who plays college sports is provided additional support along with that higher education, including academic tutoring, specialized coaching, and paid travel to competitions.
The reality is that playing at college level launches a professional career for very few athletes. However, some parents begin to see their child’s investment of time in sport as one that will yield future professional and financial dividends. Young athletes often absorb these all-consuming ambitions and pressures, and down the line, they may feel they’ve disappointed their parents or as though they’ve failed. They may stay in sports long past the time they want to quit, or they might grow to hate the sport they once loved.
