Throughout the years, high school sports have grown tremendously in terms of participation. Whether an athlete has been playing since childhood or trying a sport out for the first time, playing a sport in high school can help you find friends, release stress and find a possible passion in life.

Although high school sports can invoke lots of good in students’ lives, they can also grow to be extremely toxic. High school sports can also drive a student to focus more on their sports than grades or other greater responsibilities.

High school sports can also become such a big priority and stressor in students’ lives that they grow to dislike the sport that they may have been playing for years. As students become more and more serious about a sport, it can begin to feel more like a job or a chore.

A big factor as to why students end up disliking their sport can be the coach. High school coaches have big impacts on students’ lives – even bigger than they may think.

High school coaches play an important role in students’ lives, and can even be the reason a student moves forward with a sport professionally or not. Coaches can also play a big role in the mental health of their athletes and can make or break an athlete’s spirit.

There needs to be a change made in the way that high school coaches approach and act towards their athletes. With that being said, here are a few things that coaches can do to make high school sports more enjoyable for athletes.

The first thing coaches can do is stop comparing athletes to one another. A popular strategy amongst coaches is to put two athletes up against each other in an attempt to motivate them to progress faster. By constantly pinning two athletes against each other, it can ruin the relationship between those two athletes, as well as isolate those athletes from the rest of the team.

Forcing athletes to compete against someone on their own team constantly is extremely harmful to athletes’ mental health, and disrespectful in general.

The next thing that high school coaches can do to make high school sports more fun is frequent team bonding activities. One of the best parts of playing a high school sport can be the people you meet along the way.

The bonds between athletes on the same team can last lifetimes and make the sport ten times more fun. Simple ways to build these bonds can be team bonding activities weekly in practice. By incorporating team bonding into practices, it heightens the chance of lifelong bonds between athletes and gives them more good memories of the sport.

The final thing coaches can do is encourage fun over competition. Even though the competition is important in sports teams, it’s much harder for teams to compete well when they don’t enjoy what they’re doing,
If the only thing coaches care about is winning, it’ll make players lose the passion that they once had for the sport.

Although these three ideas seem simple and require minimal effort, they will make a world of difference for the athletes.

By making the sport more enjoyable and pushing the narrative that sports should be enjoyable over anything, coaches can guarantee a strong, dedicated team with nothing but passion for their sport.