Unstoppable Athlete - Mental Resilience for Teen Athletes
Feb 3, 2026 · 32 min · 9 segments
As a parent we can rush to protective mode, but can we get curious first? Asking our athletes questions to help them self-reflect. What is the coaching looking for from you? Skill or effort wise?Are…
Well, and I think you brought up a good point about bias, and we've talked about that before too, and we are almost biased in favor of our athletes.
I think there are times when we are biased and we don't see it, and it is not in service of the athlete.
So they might be doing this, this ex- example, she has a habit of hitting balls that aren't hittable.
Which as a coach, we're trying to talk about decision-making, and it's a repeatable error that even with coaching doesn't always seem to click and change.
And because, again, volleyball is a s- is a game of mistakes, it's so glaringly obvious when it happens.
And yet, watching this athlete this weekend, she was just excelling in the back row.
Passing really well, serving really well, doing so many small other things consistently, that if you were to look on her game as a whole, she's playing amazing.
But if you just had a beef against that poor decision-making in that one situation, and she continues to do that every once in a while, maybe once a game, it would be enough as a coach to be like, "You're not listening to me." And so-
Mm-hmm
...
while it's a 10%, let's say it's a 10% of the time error, as a coach it feels like she's not coachable.
Right.
And so this bias starts to play a- against your child.
And that can be really frustrating because as a parent we're probably biased the other way, right? We have the rose-colored glasses.
We're like, "Oh, well she only made one mistake.
Other people make that mistake." And we might be missing a bigger picture as well.
So I think this is where we wanna get into the nuances of that.
Yeah.
For sure.
Well, and it's like you said, sure, maybe she's only making one mistake, but she's making that same mistake over and over.
And as a coach, that does get frustrating.
But we, yeah, we wanna work towards that.
It made me start to think about this morning, some of the girls were [laughs] sitting at my, my kitchen table, and just, we're just talking about that and how much easier it is to play when you know the coach believes in you.
And so then the coach is giving you space to make that mistake, but also space to fix the mistake.
And, and th- that's where we ideally wanna be, and we want all of our girls to feel that way.
Well, and I think you brought up a good point about bias, and we've talked about that before too, and we are almost biased in favor of our athletes.
I think there are times when we are biased and we don't see it, and it is not in service of the athlete.
So they might be doing this, this ex- example, she has a habit of hitting balls that aren't hittable.
Which as a coach, we're trying to talk about decision-making, and it's a repeatable error that even with coaching doesn't always seem to click and change.
And because, again, volleyball is a s- is a game of mistakes, it's so glaringly obvious when it happens.
And yet, watching this athlete this weekend, she was just excelling in the back row.
Passing really well, serving really well, doing so many small other things consistently, that if you were to look on her game as a whole, she's playing amazing.
But if you just had a beef against that poor decision-making in that one situation, and she continues to do that every once in a while, maybe once a game, it would be enough as a coach to be like, "You're not listening to me." And so-
Mm-hmm
...
while it's a 10%, let's say it's a 10% of the time error, as a coach it feels like she's not coachable.
Right.
And so this bias starts to play a- against your child.
And that can be really frustrating because as a parent we're probably biased the other way, right? We have the rose-colored glasses.
We're like, "Oh, well she only made one mistake.
Other people make that mistake." And we might be missing a bigger picture as well.
So I think this is where we wanna get into the nuances of that.
Yeah.
For sure.
Well, and it's like you said, sure, maybe she's only making one mistake, but she's making that same mistake over and over.
And as a coach, that does get frustrating.
But we, yeah, we wanna work towards that.
It made me start to think about this morning, some of the girls were [laughs] sitting at my, my kitchen table, and just, we're just talking about that and how much easier it is to play when you know the coach believes in you.
And so then the coach is giving you space to make that mistake, but also space to fix the mistake.
And, and th- that's where we ideally wanna be, and we want all of our girls to feel that way.
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