While my youngest daughter is a wrestler, she also plays softball. Her older sister plays softball, as well. After a tournament game this past summer, a coach from another team approached my middle daughter and told her that he “loved her positive energy and attitude.”
This opened up a very important dialogue between she and I, and the main point of our conversation was that you never know who is watching you play and compete in your sports.
In her mind, all she saw were stands full of parents, when in reality, there were coaches from other teams who were either “killing time” or waiting for the diamond because their game was next. Now, I’ve never been a college coach and I certainly can’t speak for them, but from what I understand, they would gladly take a kid with above-average talent who has a positive attitude and is coachable over a superstar with a bad attitude and corresponding sense of entitlement.
No coach wants a “cancer” on their team because it can metastasize and spread. As the old saying goes, “Misery loves company.”
As you get closer to college age, more and more coaches will be watching you play and compete. You won’t know that they’re in attendance, but they will definitely see you. If they like what they see, they will figure out who you are based on the heat sheets or rosters.
And guess what they’ll look at next? You guessed it . . . your social media profiles.
My rule of thumb when it comes to my daughters and social media is, “If you wouldn’t want your grandma to see it, don’t post it.” And even then, I’ve had to encourage some deletions based solely upon lip-syncing. There is no faster way to kill a scholarship opportunity then to have inappropriate social media accounts. (And no, deleted doesn’t mean deleted forever.)
Sports is about so much more than just competing, and that’s because you have the opportunity to learn many important life skills. After all, you’ll be coached by various bosses during your entire life. You’ll work on teams, and there will be times when you’ll have to carry more of the load than the person next to you. You’ll have to put in extra work to master your craft. There will always be team members with whom you don’t see eye-to-eye, but at the end of the day, they’re still on your team.
A positive attitude and the ability to be coachable will help you through all of these times and also help you to excel.
So when you perform, make sure that you do so at the highest levels of your ability and talent . . . because you never know who is watching.
