1Coaching As Catholic Youth Ministry

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�  Catholic Coaching Essentials

If you are like most Catholic youth league coaches, you have probably been recruited from the ranks of concerned parents, sport enthusiasts, or members of the congregation. Like many rookie and veteran coaches, you probably

have had little formal instruction on how to coach. But when the call went out for coaches to assist with the sport program, you answered it, because you like children and enjoy sports—and perhaps because you wanted to be involved in a worthwhile ministry.

Your initial coaching assignment may be difficult. Like many volunteers, you may not know everything there is to know about the sport or about how to work with children. You may be unsure of how to integrate faith and sports effectively. Catholic Coaching Essentials presents the basics of coaching Catholic youth sports effectively. To start, we look at your responsibilities and what’s involved in being a coach.

Your Responsibilities As a CoachCoaching at any level involves much more than scoring points or preventing your opponent from scoring points. Coaching involves accepting the tremen-dous responsibility you accept when parents put their children into your care. As a coach, you’ll be called upon to do the following:

1. Provide a safe physical environment.

Participation in any sport carries with it inherent risks; make it a priority to explain that to the athletes and their parents before the start of the season. This means that during the course of the year, athletes will get bumps and bruises, will be tired and need extra rest, and will need to increase their fluid intake to stay hydrated.

Teach athletes and parents the importance of keeping their equipment in good working order. Reassure them that, to avoid injury, they will learn the safest techniques and that you have a safety plan and you will follow it (see chapter 3 for more information). And remember that as coach, you’re responsible for regularly inspecting the practice and com-petition facilities and equipment (see “Facilities Inspection Checklist” on page 70-72 of the appendix).

2. Communicate in a positive way.

As you can already see, you have a lot to communicate. You’ll communi-cate not only with your athletes and parents but also with the coaching staff, officials, administrators, and others. Communicate in a way that is positive and that demonstrates that you have the best interests of the athletes at heart (see chapter 2 for more information).

3. Teach the fundamental skills of your sport.

When teaching the fundamental skills of your sport, you want to be sure that your athletes have fun. Therefore, we ask that you help all athletes

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be the best they can be by creating an enjoyable, yet productive, practice envi-ronment (see chapter 4 for more infor-mation). To help your athletes improve, you need to have a sound understand-ing of sport-specific skills.

4. Teach the rules of the sport.

Introduce the rules of the sport and incorporate them into individual instruction. Many rules can be taught in the first practice; others can be intro-duced at any time an opportunity naturally arises in later practices.

5. Direct athletes in competition.

This includes determining starting lineup or event assignments and a substitution plan, relating appropriately to officials and to oppos-ing coaches and athletes, and making sound tactical decisions during competitions (see chapter 5 for more information on coaching during competitions). Remember that the focus is not on winning at all costs but on coaching your kids to do their best, improve their skills, and display moral values.

6. Help your athletes to become fit and to value fitness for a lifetime.

We want you to help your athletes be fit so that they can participate safely and successfully. We also want your athletes to learn to become fit on their own, understand the value of fitness, and enjoy training. Thus, we ask you not to make them do push-ups or run laps as punishment. Make it fun to get fit for their sport, and make it fun to participate in their sport so that they’ll stay fit for a lifetime.

7. Help young people develop Christian character.

Christian character is no less important to teach than the fundamental skills of the sport. We ask you to teach character to athletes by dem-onstrating and encouraging behaviors that express Catholic values at all times. For example, athletes should learn to help their teammates, participate within the rules, and show respect for their opponents. Many coaches ask their athletes to sign a team code of conduct pledge at the beginning of the season. This code of conduct should be based on your team policies (see “Athlete Code of Conduct” in the appendix on page 73).

These are your responsibilities as a coach. Remember that every athlete is an individual; you must provide a wholesome environment in which each athlete has the opportunity to learn without fear, have fun, and enjoy the overall experience.

Coaching TipAlthough it may take more thought and may require you to plan ahead, always explain to parents what you and your staff are trying to accom-plish, and explain to athletes what you want them to do, rather than what they should not do.

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Goals of Youth MinistryIt is well known that Pope John Paul II was an avid athlete with a special love of sports. He recognized the powerful influence of sports in his own life. He was a goalie on his high school soccer team and later went on to become an enthusiastic skier, hiker, and swimmer. At age 38, he was on a kayaking trip when he received the call informing him that he was the new auxiliary bishop of Krakow.

Pope John Paul II recognized that sports are of great interest to many young people. He also realized that sports provide strong formative experiences for athletes and coaches alike.

Our athletics should go hand in hand with our youth ministry. Sport well understood and practiced contributes to the whole person because it demands generous effort, careful self-control, mastery of self and respect for others, complete commitment, and team spirit.

Pope John Paul II

There are many fine youth sports programs in school and community set-tings. Youth sports in a Catholic setting are part of youth ministry, the Catholic Church’s comprehensive approach for celebrating and sharing our Catholic faith with young people.

Youth sports are a great way to achieve the three goals of youth ministry, as stated in the landmark document Renewing the Vision (National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1997). The three goals of youth ministry include

• empowering young people to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in our world today;

• drawing young people into responsible participation in the life, mission, and work of the faith community; and

• fostering the spiritual growth of each young person.

Empower Young People to Live As DisciplesDiscipleship involves young people actively shaping and influencing their faith experience. This apprenticeship with mentors and leaders of faith is common to the world of sports, in which coaches and athletic leaders invest their time and talents in the development of the young people on their teams.

Discipleship is about helping young people know, love, and serve God with their minds, hearts, and hands. Discipleship requires a full engagement and investment of all of a young person’s talents and abilities, and sports provide an environment where intellectual and physical abilities, and passion for growth and achievement, come together. In that environment, young people can more fully develop and discover the gifts that God gave them—as indi-viduals and as part of a team.

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Draw Young People Into the Faith CommunityCatholic youth ministry is rooted in Christian community; young people are on sports teams in a specific Catholic parish or school. This community pro-vides a context where young people grow up learning and growing into full and responsible members of the community. The team is not independent, but instead is an extension of the parish or school community and all that it stands for.

The Catholic faith community does not exist for itself but for the good of the world. A Catholic sports team must identify and practice basic values that correspond with the core values of the Catholic Church. Among these values are the dignity of life—which is to be embraced, cherished, celebrated, and defended—and social justice.

Foster Young People’s Spiritual GrowthEvery young person is a unique child of God and deserves to be treated as such. Just as young people differ in their athletic backgrounds and abilities, so too do they bring a particular experience of faith that needs to be recog-nized and valued. The hope is that at season’s end, all team members will have grown—in their faith in God and through the common faith that they share with their teammates.

Sacramental VisionThis vision invites believers to see God in all things—in the ordinary, the extraordinary, and the transcendent moments of life. Sport is filled with many ordinary moments, such as routine practices, where progress may seem to be slow, yet change is happening, step by step. There are also extraordinary moments, as when a young person has that “A ha!” moment of successfully using a newly developed skill in practice or in a game. And there are opportu-nities for powerful transcendent moments, as well, as when teammates bring out the best in each other and in their opponents during an exciting game. In each of these examples, it is the coach who needs to recognize God in all things and help the players and parents to do the same and see all things new.

Catholic WorldviewThis is a worldview in which Catholic teachings, beliefs, tradition, scripture, and values come together to form a coherent and integrated faith experience. In sports, team members experience this worldview when they pray together before practices and games, learn life lessons about treating others with dignity, do service for others (by, for example, making sure that their extra equipment is prepared and given to those in need), and observe the way that coaches and players speak to and interact with opponents and officials.

Although a game might look quite similar in different youth sports set-tings, the approach to Catholic youth sports is grounded in the Gospel and

�  Catholic Coaching Essentials

in Renewing the Vision, the church’s cornerstone document on youth ministry. Sport is seen as a powerful tool for evangelizing young people and providing them with opportunities to grow as disciples of Jesus Christ. The coach is central to this approach, as a youth minister and mentor in faith.

Coach As Youth MinisterWhen sports are played as part of Catholic youth ministry, they are integrated into the church’s comprehensive ministry with young people, and the role of the coach becomes that of a youth ministry leader. As such, you must be mindful of four particular requirements:

Answering the Call to ServeA coach serves on behalf of the parish community. The parish recognizes the coach’s gifts and talents, asks the coach to serve, and supports him or her in that role. Although coaches need to learn about child development and the technical details and rules of a given sport, this knowledge is secondary to the understanding that they are serving the young people on behalf of the parish or school community and are not acting on their own.

Being Accountable to the Faith CommunityCoaches are accountable for the way they carry out their ministries. When a coach answers a community’s call, that carries with it an obligation to receive training so as to serve young people as effectively as possible. There is a mutual accountability between the coach and the faith community, where support, training, supervision, and evaluation are standard components of the rela-tionship. The training required includes sport-specific knowledge and skills as well as ways to link sports ministry to the faith development and experience of young people.

Teaching Gospel Values Through SportsA coach should be a faithful, practicing Catholic who models the values, teach-ings, and beliefs of the Catholic Church. Because coaches are ministering on behalf of the community, they have a responsibility to continue to grow in faith as adults. The ministry setting in athletics is most often a gym or a field, and the lessons and values are not strictly intellectual exercises. Even so, coaches are powerful role models and teachers of values and life lessons who must, therefore, continue to grow and learn as adult disciples of Jesus Christ.

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Placing Kids FirstCoaches must determine what it means to place the needs and hopes of the student-athletes ahead of all other competing interests. This requires a clear sense of the boundaries of all the key persons and roles in youth sports. Spe-cifically, the coach as youth minister must understand, in a practical way, that players play, coaches coach, officials officiate, and parents provide positive support for their own children and for all of the children involved. People often overstep these boundaries, which frequently causes problems in youth sports programs. The coach as a youth ministry leader intentionally attends to the boundaries and helps team members and others to do the same.

Principles of Building Christian CharacterWhen coaches understand that they are youth ministry leaders, they rec-ognize that sport is a great forum in which to teach Christian character and life skills. The following six principles are foundational when building Christian character in a Catholic sports setting.

1. Building Christian character focuses on behaviors and skills. There-fore, athletes and coaches consider how their treatment of teammates, opponents, and officials is an active demonstration of their Christian faith. Learning the skills and behaviors that model these values builds Christian character.

2. Building Christian character takes time. Through diligent repetition, good coaches help players develop habits that reinforce their skills so they can grow as athletes. Similarly, it takes time and repetition to develop habits that represent the best of Christian character.

What a long time it takes to become the person I have always been.

Parker Palmer

3. Christian character is about connecting the behaviors of your outer life with the growth and development of your inner life.

4. Christian character is rooted in vocation—that meeting place between your gifts and the world’s needs.

5. Catholic Christian character is distinctive in three ways: • Rooted in the dignity of the human person—every person is made

in the image and likeness of God. • Rooted in justice—connected to the Christian community and the

human family. • Rooted in Catholic theology—the sacraments, trinity, prayer, ritual,

paschal mystery, scripture, tradition, saints, Mary, and so on.

�  Catholic Coaching Essentials

6. Building Catholic Christian character is most effective in an integrated, comprehensive youth ministry model. Identify valuable character traits and intentionally nurture these in all team members. These traits will help student-athletes to grow in faith and maturity and will also shape team dynamics and mutual expectations. Here are 10 traits that athletes can learn through sports: • Respect: Acting and speaking in ways that are considerate and

tolerant of others; never taunting teammates, opponents, officials, or fans at a sporting event.

As the chosen of God, then, the holy people whom he loves, you are to be clothed in heartfelt compassion, in generosity and humility, gentleness and patience.

Colossians 3:12

• Humility: Using one’s gifts while highlighting the gifts of others; never boasting of athletic greatness or superiority, whether one is exceptionally skilled or not.

Nothing is to be done out of jealousy or vanity; instead, out of humility of mind everyone should give preference to others, everyone pursuing not selfish interests but those of others.

Philippians 2:3

• Love: Giving in a way that is selfless, sacrificial, and upholds the dignity of others; demonstrating a basic caring for oneself, the game, the opponents, and the officials.

You must love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. You must love your neighbor as yourself.

Mark 12:30–31

• Peacemaking: De-escalating an argument or conflict and taking actions for peace; not increasing competition or pressure to win based on the desire for payback or revenge.

Blessed are the peacemakers: they shall be recognized as children of God.

Matthew 5:9

• Patience: Waiting for others without being rude or demanding; rec-ognizing that skill development and achievement in sports happens at different times and in different ways for all team members.

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We are well aware that God works with those who love him, those who have been called in accordance with God’s purpose, and turns everything to their good.

Romans 8:28

• Honesty: Telling the truth under all circumstances, especially when it is difficult; never cheating or intentionally breaking rules to win or gain an unfair advantage, regardless of the likelihood of getting caught.

Live as children of light—for the fruit of the light is found in what is good and right and true.

Ephesians 5:9

• Justice: Speaking and acting on behalf of the poor, vulnerable, and suffering; playing and competing to win the right way, within the letter and spirit of competition.

This is what Yahweh asks of you: Only this, to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8

• Forgiveness: Accepting an apology, letting go of a grudge, and refusing to seek revenge; de-escalating the drive for vengeance against your opponent in competition.

Yes, if you forgive others their failings your heavenly father will forgive you yours; but, if you do not forgive others, your father will not forgive your failings either.

Matthew 6:14–15

• Initiative: Doing what is needed to help without being asked; working hard to improve skills in practice, with the team or alone, to better contribute to the team effort.

Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one.

I Corinthians 9:25

• Cooperation: Achieving a common goal while valuing all persons’ contributions; recognizing how to use your skills to bring out the best skills and performance in others.

If one part is hurt, all the parts share its pain. And if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy. Now you are Christ’s body, each of you with a part to play in the whole.

I Corinthians 12:26–27

10  Catholic Coaching Essentials

Components of Comprehensive Youth MinistryRenewing the Vision identifies eight key components that make up a compre-hensive youth ministry. The leaders of all youth ministry programs, especially Catholic youth sports programs, need to intentionally consider how these components can be realized in a sports team and an athletic program. The following examples identify the components and offer suggestions for address-ing each one with your team:

• Advocacy: The coach protects, values, and acts on behalf of all team members, regardless of their skill levels. Coaches bring an adult youth-ministry voice and perspective to what is the best for every child on the team, and they must be willing to speak up on behalf of the children to whomever necessary, even if it means challenging powerful adults, parents, or tournament leaders who have different agendas.

• Catechesis: The coach educates team members about the content and values of the Catholic faith. Helping team members understand that giving every player a chance to play is a moral decision because it demonstrates how we value and treat people is one example. Another is teaching team members why we don’t seek revenge or humiliate opponents by running up the score.

• Building community: The coach facilitates a powerful sense of belonging among the team members, setting a standard of mutual respect and account-ability and helping team members to treat each other with kindness. Coaches need to provide an intentional Christian environment in which team members learn how people should treat each other under every circumstance.

• Evangelization: The coach shares the “good news” of the Catholic faith with team members, opponents, and parents. Most often coaches share their faith through action. They should also make a determined attempt to integrate a Christian approach into the way they handle everything that happens on a team. A coach might talk about Christian faith and explain to team members why we do things a certain way and how that is rooted in our values and beliefs as Christians.

• Justice and service: The coach models and helps team members learn about justice and the importance of service as a fundamental requirement for living a Christian life. The team might do a service project together, such as a uniform or sports equipment drive for those in need, or take advantage of an existing parish service opportunity. Key lessons about how we treat the least of our brothers and sisters can be learned through playing on a Catholic youth sports team.

• Leadership development: The coach provides opportunities for team members to practice and develop leadership skills. The team can be invited to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of its performance before the coach

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does, or team members can prepare and lead a drill for the next practice. Team members need to know that the coach believes they are capable of making good decisions and becoming good leaders, so they should be given oppor-tunities to make decisions about things that matter on the team.

• Pastoral care: The coach should be aware of what is going on in the lives of team members and should provide a safe place for them to grow and get the help they need. A child may be dealing with any number of issues (ill-ness, loss, disappointment, rejection, divorce, addiction in the family, and so forth). When coaches are attentive to the whole child, they can be supportive and provide referrals for help when appropriate.

• Prayer and worship: The coach should connect “God moments” in sports to basic prayer habits. This might mean asking team members what they saw in a practice or game that modeled Christian values and then affirming team members as they learn to look at things from that vantage point. Different players can be asked to lead team prayers, and occasionally, team and family members may want to attend the same mass to pray together in a visible way with the larger faith community.

It is difficult to address all eight components in any single practice or game. However, over the course of an entire season, it is a good idea to review the components and strategically plan how you will work each component into the overall experience.

In parishes, young people need to have a wide variety of opportunities to use their gifts and to express their faith through meaningful roles.

Renewing the Vision

Sports Teams As Christian CommunitiesWhen sports are placed in the context of youth ministry, the coach becomes a youth minister and the team becomes a small Christian community. As a Christian community, the team becomes a place where basic Christian values are lived, practiced, valued, and learned.

For a team to be a Christian community, the following must be in place:

1. Caring, Christ-centered relationships

Coaches must genuinely care for every child, regardless of the child’s ability to perform or achieve. Additionally, the coach sets the tone to help team members care for each other in a similar manner. A coach should have high expectations for the growth and achievement of individual athletes and the team. However, caring for and supporting all team members is a critical value, regardless of player or team success.

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2. Shared Christian experiences

The most common reasons young people want to be on a team are to have fun, be with friends, get exercise, and develop skills. Although winning and losing are part of sports, the coach plays a critical role in keeping the game in a healthy context, recognizing that a child’s per-spective and adult perspectives are sometimes radically different. As a team experiences the ups and downs of practices, games, and personal and team successes and disappointments, there is a great opportunity for student-athletes to grow, individually and together, as lessons are learned through every sport experience.

We have to learn to sit at the feet of our own experience. Everything we do is either a lesson or a blessing. A lesson teaches us something important that we can use later. A blessing is a gift to value and hold on to and realize how lucky we are.

Joanie, 8th grade CYO athlete

3. Good teaching

Coaches do a great deal of teaching—of faith, skills, concepts, values, attitudes, and much more. Lisa Calderone reminds coaches and teachers that every practice and game experience should cover the four G’s to be most beneficial for young people:

• Grab my attention: Get me more involved with what is going on.

• Give me something: Help me learn something that is new to me that I need to know.

• Get something out of me: Let me practice what I learn, expect me to achieve it, and let me try to do it under different and challenging circumstances.

• Go make a difference: Help me understand what I need to do with what I learned and when and where are the best times to try it in games or other pressure situations.

Changing Lives: Transformational Ministry and Today’s Teens, Lisa Calderone, Pflaum Publishing, Dayton, OH, 2004, p. 87.

4. Shared ownership, values, and contribution

One of the most difficult challenges comes when coaches or parents attempt to live vicariously through the players in an unhealthy way. Shared ownership is about recognizing that the game primarily belongs to the players. The coaches are there to help ensure a positive Christian experience, where players set individual and team goals, gain skills and knowledge about the game, and mature and have fun with teammates. Team values need to be connected to Gospel values that are reinforced through all that the team does. Effective coaches recognize that every player has something to contribute and helps make the team a place where members can be safely vulnerable to try new things and learn new skills in a supportive environment.

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5. Mutual accountability

The coaches and players should understand that everyone is responsible to treat each other, the opponents, and the officals in ways that model basic Christian values. This includes the language that coaches and players use; how success, disappointments, and conflicts are handled; and the shared expectation and understanding that humiliating play-ers, teammates, opponents, or officials is unacceptable in a Christian sports setting. Players and coaches are free to give each other honest feedback, even when it is critical of what is happening or how people are being treated. Players need to feel valued and heard; what they think and feel matters, both for individual student-athletes and for the team as a whole.

Youth Ministry: Partnership With Parents and FamiliesAn additional dimension of Catholic youth sports relates to the role of parents as partners in the sports ministry that we share. Although specific strategies and skills for communicating with parents is covered in chapter 2, Catholic coaches need to view parents as partners, or, in the words of St. Paul, as “coworkers in the ministry of Christ.”

One of the most important tasks for the church today is to promote the faith growth of families by encouraging families to share, celebrate, and live their faith at home and in the world.

The profound and ordinary moments of daily life are the threads from which families can weave a pattern of holiness.

Renewing the Vision

Importance of the PartnershipWhen coaches work in partnership with parents, it can be challenging for all, yet it is nevertheless critical to be in agreement regarding the purpose, vision, and values of Catholic youth sports. Children initially choose to play sports because it is fun and they like to be with friends, learn skills, compete in a game, and get exercise. Winning is not the primary value for young people in Catholic youth sports, and coaches and parents need to consider the implica-tions of that common understanding before the season begins.

When coaches or parents forget these healthy childlike perspectives, conflict arises, and the many benefits of sports are diminished for the child. When parents or coaches place too much emphasis on winning, conflict again escalates, to the detriment of the young athletes. In Catholic youth sports programs, the primary goal is to use sports as a way to grow in faith. That is the central measure of success.

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It is estimated that as many as 70 percent of young people quit playing organized sports by the age of 13. Consequently, the many benefits of playing sports (having fun, being with friends, learning skills, developing character, growing in faith, being on a team, learning how to be resilient, and more) are lost for too many children at too young an age. In addition, children who aren’t participating in sports miss out on an opportunity for physical activity and development. It is well documented that childhood obesity is a serious problem; youth sports are a great way to help young people develop healthy exercise habits that can last a lifetime.

Partnership and Program DetailsAnother aspect of the partnership with parents and families in Catholic youth sports relates to specific program directions and details. Although these deci-sions are not made solely by the coach of each team, the coach must deal with each of these issues in a way that honors the partnership between coaches, players, parents, and families. Here are some of the many issues that need to be carefully considered by your Catholic sports advisory board or booster organization:

• Games and practice schedules that allow families to attend mass together on Sunday mornings.

• Expectations about how the team will be coached, and what parents expect from the coach and from their child as a member of the team.

• Decisions about the frequency, time, and length of practices, games, and travel tournaments, so that healthy childhood development is honored and family life is supported by coaches and parents alike.

• Playing-time issues, and decisions about who is on which team and who coaches which teams, need to be worked out in ways that support and nourish family life while also being attentive to basic Catholic values.

• The length of the sports seasons and how many teams young people can be on at one time (in the same or different sports) are also issues that need to addressed in partnership with parents.

The coach in a Catholic athletic program needs to address these issues and more, while also attending to the goals of individual athletes, the team, the parish or school, and the overall program. Many sports program leaders have come to realize that having a preseason meeting with parents is an important step, in order to come to a common understanding of what will take place during the season. And although it is a good start to hold such a meeting, the meeting itself needs to model and demonstrate the value of coaches and parents working together in partnership for the benefit of every child. See the “Preseason Meeting” handout in the online Coaches Clipboard for a meeting agenda template.

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It can be difficult for coaches, team members, parents, and athletic lead-ers to work through the challenging and competing issues in Catholic youth sports, but it is nevertheless critical to do so, and to do so as partners who share a common Gospel vision and values. If everyone works together on these issues, coaches will be able to focus on coaching and will be far less likely to get worn out or beaten down and quit coaching altogether.

Henry Nouwen describes youth ministry, including Catholic youth sports, this way:

It calls for Christians who are willing to develop their sensitivity to God’s presence in their own lives, as well as in the lives of others, and to offer their experiences as a way of recognition and liberation for others. It calls for ministers, in the true sense, who lay down their own lives for their friends, helping them to distinguish between the constructive and the destructive spirits and making them free for the discovery of God’s life-giving spirit in the midst of this maddening world. It calls for creative weakness.

Creative Ministry, 1971, pp.118–119