Coaches and Players

A travel team coach must also make numerous potentially unpopular decisions, including playing team members in positions they, or their parents, do not enjoy or adjusting playing times in ways that frequently do not provide for equal playing time .

From time to time, coaches may have to drop a player (although, as a practical matter, this is almost always confined to the spring as the roster is prepared for the upcoming season.) There are lots of reasons why it becomes necessary to cut a player and the discretion belongs entirely to the coach. Experienced travel coaches know, however, that cutting a young person can be one of the most difficult things a young person has to deal with. Not surprisingly, parents can become very emotionally involved. The coach should try to give the child (and if a younger child, the parents) lots of notice that the child is at risk of not making next year's squad. At the same time, the coach should identify those aspects of the player's game which need to be improved in order for the child to stay on the squad. When faced with a cut, the coach will often try to talk the parents into moving the child to another team. Experience shows that if the parents and child opt to move the player from the team, the emotional hurt and impact is minimized. Also, most coaches believe that it is their responsibility to work with the player and the parents to try to find the player another, more suitable team.

Experienced travel coaches try to keep their rosters small, especially when coaching younger aged teams. The players are training hard and want to play. Their parents certainly want them to play. If a team is carrying 17 or 18 players on its roster (or 12 to 14 on a small-sided roster), there is simply no way that the team will be able to provide adequate playing time for every player. Smaller rosters assume that all players will be at the practices, matches and especially tournaments.

Experienced travel coaches know that it is important to try to stay calm and mostly quiet during games (of course, some directing and encouraging is always appropriate, especially with younger aged teams). If the coach is always yelling instructions at the players they will be: less apt to learn to make their own decisions, less likely to learn to talk to one another on the field, and less likely to play with confidence.

Experienced travel coaches know that it is important, especially at the younger ages, for players to be able to shrug off a loss. If players take emotional baggage away from a loss because the coach has reacted badly to the loss, they are more likely to play poorly in future games and, more importantly, experience a good deal of stress and worry.