Chapter 27: THE SOCIAL CONTRACT – ROOKIE: Surviving Your Freshman Year of College Soccer

When you join a team, you agree to accept correction from the coach.* That is the social contract that you enter, and believe me, it is binding. Your coach has a responsibility to demand the best from you, and he can’t do that silently. Everyone gets correction. Even you.

One of the best favors you can do for yourself is to be coachable. When the coach corrects you, he feels he is helping you and that some part of you should be grateful for having received this new nugget of wisdom. Coaching corrections are not personal attacks, so don’t take them as an attempt to embarrass you in front of your peers. Your skin needs to be thicker than that.

When your coach is offering you correction, do not interrupt him to say, “I know, I know.” Seriously, he hates that. And his response is going to be, “Well if you know it, why didn’t you do it?” And that actually will be embarrassing.

When your coach is correcting you, for the love of all things holy, do not roll your eyes! That eye roll conveys the message that you already know it all and that the coach is wasting your time when there are far better things you could be doing with your life. Now, how do you think that will go over?

Listen to me… correction is a good thing. Accept it and grow from it. When your coach stops correcting you, he’s stopped coaching you. When he stops coaching you, that’s the time to worry… because your replacement is on the way.

*I first heard this phrase from Bruce Brown, the amazing founder of Proactive Coaching.

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