The post-game speech

[Dabears17]

Nope...

I have been at 1-2 minute max for years now and only to highlight something great and we can talk at practice.

As Domingo Ayala says "Yes I know what happened coach, I was there."

Agree... if its more than 5 to 10 minutes, its too long. The constructive thing to do would to be high light a couple positive things, let the players go, then keep the assistant coaches for 20-30 minutes to make notes about what they need to do for better practices.

 

[softball dad 6]

DDs team started out poorly this year. First 3 games of the first tournament they played well below the talent level of the team. The HC and I talked about it at the end of the third game. All we told them was that they were playing below our expectations and what we thought their talent level was. We told them they needed to meet amongst themselves and see if they could figure it out. The best thing is they did. It is an 18u team and you probably cant do it at the younger ages but i am convinced it was the best thing we could have done for team chemistry

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[Nimrod]

If we lost, the players know why we lost.

I haven't found many young players who can give an good explanation of why one team won and the other lost. It's usually something overly simple, like we didn't have our heads in the game or lacked energy today, ignoring the real strengths that one team inflicted upon the other, or those fatal shortcomings that always spell doom (''Our pitchers are slow but wild!'')

That said, I completely agree that it does no good to explain it in a post-game speech, or maybe ever. Especially when so many coaches have their own hair-brained ideas for what just happened. So yeah, keep it brief.

 

[tim_s]

if they needed to hear a few words, i'd say something positive......quick heads up on the schedule for the week, and then drive safe

nothing negative, nothing that i wanted any real productivity out of - "hey, we played well, nice trophy! or hey, we fell short, back at it next week!"

i like feedback.....first practice after every tournament we gave feedback, in a progression

first tourney - it was an email to the player and parents - here's what you're doing well, here's what you need to work on - so everyone was on the same page

we'd then do notecards to each player individually and go over them at practice, coaches and player

we'd move into asking the player what they did well, what they need to work on, and then coaches would give the same from their perspective.....one thing i learned, is most players were a) harder on themselves and b) generally had similar thoughts as the coaches.....there's more than one lesson in there

we'd then do a teammate telling the player & coaches what they thought the other did well/needs to work on

by the end we'd be going around a circle as a team, talking about each individual - what they did well, what they need to work on.......obviously this only works when there's trust, and you build into it


after the individual sessions, we'd do a team session - what the team did well, what we needed to work on, and how we were going to attack it that week in practice


not only did this give us all a little time to remove emotion and gave perspective with the distance.......it allowed us to have a "solution" - everyone was ready to jump into practice with goals


example - we had a group of girls that struggled to talk during games - call the situation pre play, talk in play, tell each other when they made good plays, or call each other out when they saw behaviors that violated our covenant - we knew it, and they knew it, and it came out in individual and team feedback - so the very next practice, we had cups with their names on them, and one coach added candy to it each time they spoke up at practice - pre play in situational. when someone made a play, etc - and it worked, they got better at it



SOMETIMES there is some message that needs to be conveyed, but generally they know what they did or didn't do - after a tough game or tough weekend or even just falling short of being the only team to end their weekend with a win - what they need then is a little positivity, reassurance that they'll get after it during the week, and some release from the long weekend that just happened

there' a time for purposeful feedback and a plan to make corrections,......imho post game tends to not be it, especially at the END of a tourney weekend


now, if you're mid tourney and something needs to be said? i guess which time is more appropriate - post game, or pre game for the next game? generally i know which i prefer.....

 

[CoachJD]

Wow, you're keeping it to 15 minutes! I don't think DD has ever had a coach do less than that, even when it's midnight and we have to be back at the park at 6:45 AM. Why do coaches not understand that their eyes glaze over after 3 minutes and all they're thinking about is a shower and bed?

Oh, no, I think I've gone anywhere near that long one time ever. I'm usually 5 minutes and out, but even that feels too long.

Today's was a little longer because I wanted to keep things positive. I had three pitchers out at tryouts, so the two who pitched were very inexperienced. It didn't go well at all. We play two tomorrow, so I felt the need to get them to forget about today's game. It still wasn't even close to 5 minutes though.

 

[TMD]

We rarely went over 5 minutes, but as CoachJD says, even that can feel too long.

One tournament many years ago, a notorious hothead loudmouth coach from a reasonably prominent Chicagoland travel org set the record for post-game rants. His team lost a game and he was not happy (to be fair, I don't think he is ever happy). Our team was playing on the same field immediately afterwards, an 80 minute finish-the-inning pool game. Coach Loudmouth was still berating his team when our game ended. I am now long out of the local travel scene, but I believe this guy is still doing his thing and still as over-the-top as ever.

 

[bmakj]

longest post game talk (I refuse to call it a speech) I ever gave was after a loss in the championship game in rec league (4 team league), this was 12u. team lost a heartbreaker, down our best player (class trip that did not arrive home until evening). DD hit line drive right into SS glove for 2nd out in last inning, runners were on, 18 inches in any direction and it was a game tying double at minimum. spent about 7-8 minutes telling them to get their heads up, no tears, they played great (better than I expected), they had a great year, and I was proud of each and every one of them. then a mom brought cupcakes, someone had a birthday that week !

 

[Greatdaytobeawildcat]

Tournament this weekend, saw a coach skip the speech and just told the girls to line up on the foul line for sprints. (a pool play game they won, btw).

 

[_MIA_]

Tournament this weekend, saw a coach skip the speech and just told the girls to line up on the foul line for sprints. (a pool play game they won, btw).

I've seen this too..the best is when they make them run sprints DURING the game..as if most Pre-teen/Teen girls are not self-conscious enough already.

 

[JLI2010]

After a pretty awful finish to a game a week ago, I decided I was done with the post-game speeches. I've never found they have much value, and without them, everybody gets to go home sooner. I actually talked with my high school girls about it, and I think they agree that the speeches aren't very useful (maybe I'm just bad at them).

If we lost, the players know why we lost. Do I need to immediately point out that we made a bunch of errors? If we won, maybe a little bit more of a chat to point out some good games/good plays, but do we really need to sit there for 15 minutes to go over a random regular season win?

This isn't football. This is a sport where we play a lot of games, sometimes many days in a row, and even good teams have bad games. I made a point this year (during the HS season) of trying to reduce the importance of each individual game. Every game is not all or nothing. Losing a game on some random Tuesday afternoon isn't going to alter the entire course of our season, so why act like it will? A post-game speech just makes everything feel so heavy, and while there are certain moments where they might need an immediate team meeting, for most games? I just don't see how it's necessary. I'll make notes about the game after the fact and bring those thoughts to the next practice, you know, the place where we can actually do something to improve.

For the past couple games (one win, one loss), it's been pretty great. A quick couple lines, reminders about the next practice/game, letting the previous belt holder pass it on to the next person, and we're out.

Someone convince me the post-game speech is actually important.

I agree but what about pre-game talks?