Coach's Goals: 24 Youth Sports Coaching Quotes and Resolutions For Your Season

Before each season, coaches have high hopes and goals for your team and yourself. Sometimes these thoughts just rattle around our minds. Sometimes we verbalise them to players and parents. And sometimes we even achieve them.

Whatever your goals are for this season, it helps to write them down.

I asked twelve youth sports coaches to write down their coaching resolutions for the upcoming season so we could share them here anonymously.

Perhaps it's helpful to hear the thoughts running through your coaching peers' minds, to get perspective on our own internal coaching monologue.

Here are 12 of your peers' goals and resolutions. I've added some comments in italics with my own thoughts and helpful links.

As always, feel free to steal the best ideas.

24 Awesome Coaching Resolutions by Youth Sports Coaches

Here’s how 12 coaches answered…

1. Continue to be a positive role model to my athletes.
2. Reward my players for their participation on my team, not just winning.
3. Recruit more athletes to join my team.
4. Constantly learn more about how to become a better coach and leader. 
5. Make better and deeper personal connections with my athletes. A beautiful resolution. We spoke to Matt Lisle on this subject on the blog last week.
6. Learn from other great coaches.
7. Focus more on having fun.
8. Challenge my players every time we’re together.
9. Communicate better with my team and improve communication between everyone on the team.
10. Increase awareness for parents of all team events so they can get more involved. Involved and informed parents make youth sports a better place. Here's our guide.
11. Raise more funds for our team.
12. Take time to reflect personally as a coach.
13. Develop kids for life as well as the game. Take it from Michael Jordan; your impact as a coach lasts a lifetime. "Other than my parents, no one had a bigger influence on my life than Coach Smith," said Jordan, when his former coach Dean Smith passed away in 2015.
14. To teach my athletes how to compete.
15. Empower my athletes to set goals for themselves to help them improve.
16. Teach my athletes to reflect on their own performance and learn to adjust elements of their games themselves.
17. Work out more myself. This is a good one. Coaches often overlook their own physical development and activity. But young players model their coach's behaviours so try to practice what you preach and demonstrate a healthy lifestyle. And, you know, it's good for us!
18. Continue to make being a part of my team an enjoyable experience that the kids look forward to.
19. To create positive work ethics.
20. Help my team improve each time we’re together, even if just in the smallest way. As James Clear writes, “The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. Here’s how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done." Keep those small improvements adding up!
21. I want to become a better player myself, as well as a coach.
22. Win.  We’re more about celebrating the taking part at Heja, especially in younger-aged youth sports. But aspiring to win helps us all develop, and we're each entitled to our own opinion, so we'll keep it in. :)
23. Improve athletes commitment to attending practice and games.
24. Make someone smile everyday. That's a resolution! Let's all steal number 24. It's what youth sport is all about.

So, there are the 24 resolutions from the coaches we asked. What are yours?

Let me know via email, in the comments or through our contributions form.