By Mike Green

As a youth coach, you may feel like your goal is to have a winning season. The fact is a winning season is a by-product of a good process, based upon having fun.

The key feature in a winning season for a youth coach is that your players MUST enjoy themselves. If the coach makes the experience a positive one, the players will want to put the extra effort into the process.

I’m not saying all you do is mess around and not provide discipline, structure or accountability to your team. Those attributes are present within every winning team. Children need those responsibilities to learn and grow, and if you can create an enjoyable environment they will work very hard without even knowing it.

The best coaches are the ones who create a passion for the sport they are coaching, regardless of the win-loss record. The only way to do this is to respect and treat every player as a valuable member of the team while making the experience a fun and positive one. When your players say, “Practice is over already?” you’ll know you’ve done a great job as a coach.

Mike Green is a coach for The Sports Family Club, a website dedicated to enriching the lives of children through sports and activities. For more information on The Sports Family Club visit http://thesportsfamilyclub.org/home