Motivating the High School Student Athlete

One thing I struggle with as a coach is how to motivate high school athletes at practices and games. I try to get them into a routine to get into what I refer to as "volleyball mode" or "lacrosse mode." We use warm-up drills and dynamic stretching and I encourage them to start leaving school, relationships, and other distractors behind. For some athletes, this is as natural as breathing. For others, focusing on practices  and games takes hard work and practice as well. The players don't see the mental training as important as the physical training. I allow them some freedom to select warm-ups and team speeches so that each team has something to call their own. Each team also has drills that they prefer so if that's what keeps them interested, I stick with that and make modifications. Making drills competitive with winners and losers also helps. The losing side usually has to do extra conditioning but with the female athletes and maybe males as well, getting into shape and looking good is important to them. So many times, all of the players end up doing the conditioning together. This encourages team bonding and team work. The teams that end up following this path are generally the the more successful ones, not necessarily in wins and losses, but have a positive overall experience.