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Team captains can be great or they can be off-the-charts bad.
As a new school year approaches, high school seniors, and some juniors, will be elected or selected to captain their teams. Some take it seriously. Others take it too seriously. That’s not good.
A few years back, I was working with a National Scouting Report prospect who was one of the nicest kids you would ever want to meet — unassuming, quiet and hard working. She wasn’t the best, most productive athlete on her team, but nobody ever doubted her dedication.
At the start of the season, she was named co-captain of her team by her coach. He was a controlling sort, so he wasn’t going to allow the team to make a mistake and choose the wrong leader. They had no say.
Knowing her, I thought it was a good thing. It certainly would look good on her resume. What college coach doesn’t want a player with leadership abilities?
She was not the only player on that team with whom I worked. The coach wasn’t all that keen on the idea, but there were three other kids on my NSR roster of athletes. They were all juniors and excited about the upcoming season.
About a week after the start preseason practice, I began to hear rumblings from the parents of the juniors that the senior captain was being difficult and was very hard on the other players for what appeared to be no other reason than she enjoyed inflicting pain on them.
Taken aback, I attributed the comments to a group of girls, most of whom had been on the junior varsity team the previous year, getting accustomed to the way the varsity program was being run. That was more of a reasonable conclusion than to believe that the quiet kid who wouldn’t harm a flea had turned into someone unrecognizable.
As the weeks passed, more and more things began to surface about how the younger players were being bullied by “my” senior captain. It got to the point that several of the juniors’ parents called to ask if I could do anything. I politely passed.
However, as things got worse, the team’s record reflected the turmoil. The coach had no answer and no clue. That was obvious. The parents and players were so intimidated by him that they wouldn’t dare approach him about. Loss after loss against less-talented teams mounted. Failing to make the playoffs for the first in school history was a possibility. Panic ensued.
The coach could only yell. And my senior got worse and worse, both in her productivity and in terms of her treatment of the players under her charge. It was indescribably bad.
Finally, I decided to step in the back door and see if there was anything I could do to help.
Without saying anything to the parents, I started calling the senior every few days. She was flummoxed, too. Over the next two weeks it was not uncommon for her to break down crying during our conversations. She was hurting, too, but had no idea what was going on.
This girl had no idea about how to be a captain.
No one had told her what to do or how to do it. Nobody stepped in to give her feedback, one way or the other. So, for some reason, she chose to go the hard core route with her teammates. Maybe she was emulating her coach. Perhaps she simply buckled under the pressure. Regardless, what she was doing wasn’t working.
We talked about her, mostly, and what was going on with her as a player. Eventually we got around to the leadership thing. When I quizzed her about how the players were responding to her, she was nearly inconsolable. It quickly became clear that she had no idea of how to lead her team and had unwittingly led them to a disastrous season.
Without putting the blame on her, we began to talk about tactics to bring the team together. It should all start, I said, with her starting over and telling team that she wanted to make things right before it was too late. It was a hard pill for her to swallow, but she had the courage to do it.
Things improved for the team almost immediately. Although they had dug themselves into a deep hole, they did manage to reach the second round of the state playoffs.
That experience taught me several big lessons about leadership and the expectations we place on high school athletes named team captains:
- Teach captains how to do the job. As adults, parents or coaches, we cannot assume that these kids know how to be captains. Taking time to explain the responsibilities involved and how to help their team is always a better idea than them making it up as they go.
- Provide captains with leadership tips. Explaining how being a captain works is not enough. Regular feedback is absolutely necessary for a captain to be the best he or she can possibly become.
- Give captains responsibility they can handle. Piling too much on an unprepared captain can derail an entire team. Handing over leadership duties in a piecemeal fashion can result in a far more effective captain.
National Scouting Report is dedicated to finding scholarship opportunities for athletes who possess the talent, desire, and motivation to compete at the collegiate level. We’ve helped connect thousands of athletes with their perfect college.