A Tale of Two Contrasts:
Being a Coach and Being Coached
by Sharon
Kay Stoll, University of Idaho
I
have been coached and I have coached. And the differences
between these two experiences is a tale to be told.
I am an athlete, maybe a little on the grey side, but still
an athlete. I skate weekly and I was at one time a high level
skater. But I was also an athlete in team sports. I played
softball both slow and fast pitch. I was pretty good and pretty
bad at the same time. As Frank Deford (2014) would say - I
played real sport, the ultimate where one individual goes
directly against another, mano-a-mano - where you must not
only compete, but also compete against your rival's attempts
to stop you.
But then I also competed in skating where the end is resolved
by exterior judges rather than by us the participants. Some
people might argue that skating is not real sport. Anyway,
I can say I have been coached through the ultimate sports
and the not-so-ultimate sports. In my remarks here though,
I am going to focus on the mano-a-mano sports.
I was fortunate when I was coached to have some blessed humans
teach me how to play the game and play it well. My coaches
had my best interests at heart. They wanted me to be a better
player and a better athlete, but more importantly a better
person.
I was coached many years ago - so many that my coaches, teammates,
and I didn't have much stress or pressure on us whether we
won or lost. We won more than we lost - but that's not what
I remember. What I remember is the joy of playing, the great
people my coaches were, and the friends I made.
In contrast, my journey as a coach was not quite so euphoric.
When I coached, it was the beginning of Title IX and I was
blessed and plagued with success. I was blessed because I
loved coaching. I loved my players. I loved the gymnasium.
I loved the sport. Another blessing occurred when my athletes
actually improved their motor skills and we started to win
- and win a lot. We traveled. We had the press follow us.
Fans and families loved us. My high school principal thought
I was doing a great job and I got a pay raise. We continued
to win. We won city championships and later won a state championship.
But this success brought a plague with it. The more my teams
won the worse my world became. That appears to be a contradiction
- because winning and success should not create a plague -
but it did. When we won, all was good - but when we lost -
fans, parents, school administrators, the athletic director,
and even the media became experts about who should play, how
they should play, how I should coach, and pretty much everyone
had a very explicit opinion of my failings as a coach.
It wasn't long until the winning became a life unto itself.
We had to win - so we had to practice more - and improving
motor skills became the focus of what we did. Most of the
time we were very good and as a result I gained power.
Coaching athletics is a powerful, powerful experience.
Power is a wonderful feeling, but power can also be corrupting.
Lord Acton (as cited in Morell, 2014) said it best: "Absolute
power, absolutely corrupts." I didn't have absolute power,
but I had enough, and success drove my coaching. It drove
the focus of my coaching toward greater improvement of motor
skills and game strategies.
I lost sight of what it means to be coached. I lost sight
of the mysterious and important relationships that occur during
the act of coaching. The corruption led me away from the more
important social and moral skills that needed to be developed
with my athletes. Yes, motor skills are important - but my
athletes' moral skills were as important or more important.
But I didn't know it at the time. I thought the true measure
of a coach was in the successes and the wins - and that took
motor skills.
In contrast to motor skills, moral skills are the cognitive
ability to make decisions of right and wrong, and the moral
courage to actually choose the right. My athletes' moral skills
were far below their motor skills. And moral skills need just
as much training and schooling as motor skills. If the research
is correct, motor skills actually mature faster than moral
skills. According to Gazzaniga (2006), the greatest period
of moral brain growth is between the ages of 16-22. My high
school athletes were pretty good athletes by the time they
were 16 years old, but their moral brains were nowhere near
developed.
Moral skills are slower to mature because moral brain growth
takes time, repetition, thought, and reflection. The capacity
to do such is a slow process that takes place through adolescence
to young adulthood, Tancredi (2005) informs us that brain
plasticity - the actual growing process - in the moral brain
is highly affected by cognition, experience, and role models.
And it is intentional activity that increases brain growth.
In other words, we have to actually want to work at it with
good thinking, reflection, thought, and more thought.
As a coach I tried to be a good role model. I didn't swear
- well not often. I tried to be an honorable person. No one
worked harder or spent more time at the school. My door was
always open. My athletes almost lived in my office. But I
did little to help the reflective growth of my athletes' moral
brains. My athletes and I talked athletics and sport - incessantly.
Positions. Strength training. Practice schedules. New strategies.
Game plans.
We never talked about the hard realities of life. We never
discussed what was bothering them or what concerned them.
We never talked about why it was important to be truthful,
to be respectful, and to be responsible. That is unless an
athlete failed at a task and then I reamed them out pretty
good about being responsible.
I didn't know that I could play a life-changing role in their
moral brain development if I'd spent a few minutes a day in
talking with them about sex, drugs, abuse, homophobia, racism,
sexism, and gangs. Taking time to talk with them, and not
just talking to them.
Research is rather clear that powerful role models - important
people in one's life - can stimulate meaningful change and
growth in moral development (Beller & Stoll, 2000). Research
is also clear that the process of reflection is a powerful
teacher. A good role model - an honorable person - who takes
time to speak with young people can make differences in the
moral growth of those individuals - whether they are high
school athletes or collegiate athletes (Shields & Bredemeier,
2006).
I presently direct the Center for ETHICS* at the University
of Idaho. How I got to this role is directly related to my
coaching, well sort of. After I left coaching, I went back
to school, earned a Ph.D. in sport philosophy and took a job
at the University of Idaho. I was assigned to teach a class
in research design. Quite unexpectedly, one of my students
asked me a question that changed my life. Her question: "Are
athletes as morally developed as the normal population?" As
an old coach, literally and figuratively, my immediate response
was, "Of course!" She retorted, "What do you know about moral
development?" In truth I knew nothing. She asked if I would
read what she brought me to read. I agreed and so began the
journey. I discovered that what research existed about moral
development wasn't very promising or complimentary about athletics.
"If you want to build character, try something else" (Ogilvie
& Tutko, 1971).
My student, Chung Hae Hahm (1989) challenged me to develop
an instrument to measure moral reasoning of athlete populations.
After three years we had a valid and reliable measure. And
that instrument, the Hahm-Beller Values Choice Inventory grew
into the gold standard for measuring moral reasoning in athlete
populations and has been translated into 12 different languages.
Today, we are the largest single repository of information
on moral reasoning of athletics in the world. We know that
the competitive experience negatively affects moral reasoning.
We know that revenue producing, male, contact sport athletes
score the lowest on inventories, females score higher, and
that golfers, whether male or female, score the highest. We
know that the longer we participate in athletics and sport
the more negatively affected we are in our moral reasoning
and morals (Stoll S. , Center for ETHICS*, 2014).
The original data did not and still does not make me proud.
Instead, I was and am saddened that my research bludgeoned
athletics and sport, things that I loved to do and things
that I value. After the first study as I mourned what I found
and what I intuitively knew from my own coaching, another
student, Jennifer Beller (1990), challenged me to develop
intervention programs to improve moral reasoning of athlete
populations. Perhaps I could help coaches be better at what
they do: To understand coaching is more than teaching motor
skills. That coaching is a powerful platform to teach about
the important lessons of life: the role of honesty, justice,
and integrity.
Thus began our 30 years of intervention curriculums for competitive
and athlete populations. The curriculum are available both
online and in hard copy. To date our curriculum and pedagogical
techniques have been used by such diverse groups as D1 college
football teams (Stoll, 2012), US Marine second lieutenants
(Culp, 2012), Native American children (Stoll S. , 2012),
elementary character education programs (Stoll S. K., 1999),
and Major League Baseball (Stoll S. K., 2007).
We have learned much. In any highly competitive environment,
coaches play an important role in the moral education of athletes
regardless of their ages. We also know that interventions
in moral reasoning by coaches through directed and purposeful
planned instruction can improve the moral reasoning of athletes
(Stoll S. , 2014)? We also know that not every moral education
program improves moral reasoning; a poorly constructed curriculum
and pedagogy can actually have negative results (Burwell,
Beller, Stoll, & Cole, 1996; Stoll, Rudd, & Beller, 1997).
We have replicated our curriculum and pedagogical techniques
again and again, and the same result occurs: moral-reasoning
increases.
However, there is a caveat to all of this positive education
- moral reasoning is only one piece of the complicated moral
knowing, moral valuing, and moral action triumvirate (Lickona,
1991). Moral reasoning does not guarantee moral action. However,
without moral reasoning, moral action will not occur. It is
a bit like coaching - good training does not guarantee consistent
winning, but without good training, winning will not happen.
I wish I had known the importance of moral education when I was coaching. I sort of intuitively knew it from my own experience of being coached but I ignored it. I could have been a better coach. You too, can be a better coach. Build a legacy you'll be proud of by remembering that coaching is more than X's and O's.
references
Biography: Sharon K. Stoll, the director of the Center for
ETHICS* at the University of Idaho, is considered a leading
authority in moral education intervention techniques for competitive
adults and college aged students in America. She can be contacted
at "Stoll, Sharon (sstoll@uidaho.edu)"
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