Motivating Young Athletes: Punish or Perish?

Nothing pains a coach more to see a lack of effort in practice or on the playing field. How can coaches motivate athletes to put forth their best effort? A common answer is to teach them a lesson they’ll never forget, and a common form of teaching that lesson is to make them run and run and run some more. Last January, a Kentucky high school football coach was charged with reckless homicide when he had his player run some extra “gassers.” The “gassers” were ordered as a punishment for the lack of effort shown in practice on a day when the temperature hit 94 degrees. A fifteen year-old player died when his temperature reached 107 degrees. As it turned out, the gassers weren’t the only contributing factor. The young man who died hadn’t been feeling well that day. He was also taking a supplement, Creatine, and Adderall for ADD. The coach was acquitted by a jury on September 17.

Should coaches “punish” a lack of effort? There are two ways to look at this. From a backwards-looking perspective, one might ask whether the players deserved retribution for their lack of effort? Did the players do something wrong that merited the infliction of physical discomfort? When did a lack of effort in a game become a crime?

From a forward-looking perspective, the point of the punishment is not retribution but correction. Coaches make players run or engage in distasteful drills to teach them a lesson. The sprints and drills serve as a deterrent to discourage a future lack of effort. The problem with this kind of justification is that punishment avoidance has been repeatedly been shown to be the least effective form of discipline. Punishment motivates through fear, but what place should fear have in motivating athletes to play a sport?

The Associated Press reported that the county in which the player died now requires coaches to attend a seminar on using “positive reinforcement” with students. This is a step in the right direction, but perhaps not such a big step. Positive reinforcement is a more effective way of motivating behavior than negative reinforcement. But both positive and negative reinforcement are extrinsic forms of motivation. The use of extrinsic motivators implies that the play of the game is not intrinsically motivating.

Aren’t sports inherently fun? Shouldn’t the motivation to play a sport come from within? Everything we know about sports psychology and educational psychology tells us that athletes at all ages will be better off if coaches appeal to their inherent desire for mastery. The unmotivated athlete is a product of organized sports gone awry. The athlete doesn’t need “fixing,” the organization does.