24 Hour Rule

Some competitions are rough. Some games are brutal. Everyone has good and bad days and we all know this is a part of life. Gymnastics is a subjective sport so there are times when you don't understand the scoring. This is similar to not understanding an umpire's strike zone or why a foul or penalty was called. It can be confusing for coaches and even more so for parents. I understand it is frustrating and parents want answers when their child is upset after their sporting event. They sometimes do not know what to say to comfort them and are looking for logical answers. Why did their child play a different position? Why were they on the bench? Why didn't the best shooter take the final shot? Why did you take the pitcher out? And on and on...

I had a parent come up to me immediately following a competition and wanted to know why her daughter got the score she got on a particular event. A reasonable question and one that is logical to ask. I looked at her and said, "At this moment I have absolutely no idea." Not a shining moment in my coaching career, but I was being honest. I had twenty plus athletes I was keeping track of and a new session of competition soon to follow. My brain was not present enough to answer such a specific question.

Parents, many coaches need a little time to process their athletes' performances. Remember, coaches are not just focusing on your child. They are evaluating the whole group and the whole process. I am someone who needs to look at things before I make a decision. After a competition, I would sit down and review every score, then compare it to their previous competition's scores, and finally determine what we needed to focus on to improve our scores in the next meet. I did this for every athlete. After I did all of those things, I was then ready to answer questions. I had an "open door policy" for parents and was willing to answer questions about scores and training. I would review their video skill by skill and deduction by deduction if they brought it to me. I really did not want the parents to feel lost or uninformed, but the parents has to be willing to accept their child has flaws and maybe they didn't deserve a higher score than they actually received.

After spending a few competition seasons dodging parents when a meet was over, I decided I needed to be an adult and come up with a better way of handling these types of situations. I finally made a request for the parents to wait at least 24 hours after a competition was over to ask questions. "Your thinking impacts your anger, upset, or fear and colors how you see your situation. Take your own emotional temperature and if it's high give yourself a timed "time out" to calm down the intensity of whatever you are feeling. That will give you the time you need to chill so that you can then think about your thoughts. Sometimes you realize that you were thinking about the situation incorrectly or may have overreacted all together. Other times you realize that your thinking was right on track but that you may need to figure out your next steps." (Marci G. Fox, Ph.D- Psychology Today) This one little thing proved helpful in many ways. First, it allowed everyone an opportunity to decompress and take a step back from the moment. By doing this, everyone was able to take some of the emotion out of the situation and approach things with a more logical mind. Second, it opened the door for me to step in and help explain things to the athlete. When a game or competition ends, everyone is rushing to get out of the way so others can sit or move to the other field or court for their next game. There is not a lot of opportunity to really speak to an athlete if they had a rough day. You might find a small window of time, but some athletes need more than that. There will be situations where the parents are more upset than the athlete when their child has an off day. This is often the case when the athlete does not have the competitive drive the parent has.

As parents, we do not want to see our kids cry because they did not get a medal or lost a game. We feel all the emotions, have anxiety, and when we don't understand why something happened those emotions are amplified. When you go to a coach with all the feels going full steam, depending on what is said, the coach may become defensive. Coaches are human. Criticism hurts. Being questioned is hard. It is part of the job though.

We all have ups and downs. Look at professional athletes. Even the greats have days when nothing seems to go right. Shots are missed, interceptions are thrown, they go 0-4 at the plate, or fall off the beam. And yes, coaches will make mistakes too. If everyone is willing to step back, take a moment, and objectively look at a performance, all parties will benefit. The the coach will be able to provide constructive feedback, the parents will get their answers, and the athlete will have things they can work on to achieve their goals.