I have been coached and I have coached. And the differences between these two experiences is a tale to be told.
I am an athlete, maybe a little on the grey side, but still an athlete. I skate weekly and I was at one time a high level skater. But I was also an athlete in team sports. I played softball both slow and fast pitch. I was pretty good and pretty bad at the same time. As Frank Deford (2014) would say – I played real sport, the ultimate where one individual goes directly against another, mano-a-mano – where you must not only compete, but also compete against your rival’s attempts to stop you.
But then I also competed in skating where the end is resolved by exterior judges rather than by us the participants. Some people might argue that skating is not real sport. Anyway, I can say I have been coached through the ultimate sports and the not-so-ultimate sports. In my remarks here though, I am going to focus on the mano-a-mano sports.
I was fortunate when I was coached to have some blessed humans teach me how to play the game and play it well. My coaches had my best interests at heart. They wanted me to be a better player and a better athlete, but more importantly a better person.
I was coached many years ago – so many that my coaches, teammates, and I didn’t have much stress or pressure on us whether we won or lost. We won more than we lost – but that’s not what I remember. What I remember is the joy of playing, the great people my coaches were, and the friends I made.
In contrast, my journey as a coach was not quite so euphoric. When I coached, it was the beginning of Title IX and I was blessed and plagued with success. I was blessed because I loved coaching. I loved my players. I loved the gymnasium. I loved the sport. Another blessing occurred when my athletes actually improved their motor skills and we started to win – and win a lot. We traveled. We had the press follow us. Fans and families loved us. My high school principal thought I was doing a great job and I got a pay raise. We continued to win. We won city championships and later won a state championship.
But this success brought a plague with it. The more my teams won the worse my world became. That appears to be a contradiction – because winning and success should not create a plague – but it did. When we won, all was good – but when we lost – fans, parents, school administrators, the athletic director, and even the media became experts about who should play, how they should play, how I should coach, and pretty much everyone had a very explicit opinion of my failings as a coach.
It wasn’t long until the winning became a life unto itself. We had to win – so we had to practice more – and improving motor skills became the focus of what we did. Most of the time we were very good and as a result I gained power.
Coaching athletics is a powerful, powerful experience.
Power is a wonderful feeling, but power can also be corrupting. Lord Acton (as cited in Morell, 2014) said it best: “Absolute power, absolutely corrupts.” I didn’t have absolute power, but I had enough, and success drove my coaching. It drove the focus of my coaching toward greater improvement of motor skills and game strategies.
I lost sight of what it means to be coached. I lost sight of the mysterious and important relationships that occur during the act of coaching. The corruption led me away from the more important social and moral skills that needed to be developed with my athletes. Yes, motor skills are important – but my athletes’ moral skills were as important or more important. But I didn’t know it at the time. I thought the true measure of a coach was in the successes and the wins – and that took motor skills.
In contrast to motor skills, moral skills are the cognitive ability to make decisions of right and wrong, and the moral courage to actually choose the right. My athletes’ moral skills were far below their motor skills. And moral skills need just as much training and schooling as motor skills. If the research is correct, motor skills actually mature faster than moral skills. According to Gazzaniga (2006), the greatest period of moral brain growth is between the ages of 16-22. My high school athletes were pretty good athletes by the time they were 16 years old, but their moral brains were nowhere near developed.
Moral skills are slower to mature because moral brain growth takes time, repetition, thought, and reflection. The capacity to do such is a slow process that takes place through adolescence to young adulthood, Tancredi (2005) informs us that brain plasticity – the actual growing process – in the moral brain is highly affected by cognition, experience, and role models. And it is intentional activity that increases brain growth. In other words, we have to actually want to work at it with good thinking, reflection, thought, and more thought.
As a coach I tried to be a good role model. I didn’t swear – well not often. I tried to be an honorable person. No one worked harder or spent more time at the school. My door was always open. My athletes almost lived in my office. But I did little to help the reflective growth of my athletes’ moral brains. My athletes and I talked athletics and sport – incessantly. Positions. Strength training. Practice schedules. New strategies. Game plans.
We never talked about the hard realities of life. We never discussed what was bothering them or what concerned them. We never talked about why it was important to be truthful, to be respectful, and to be responsible. That is unless an athlete failed at a task and then I reamed them out pretty good about being responsible.
I didn’t know that I could play a life-changing role in their moral brain development if I’d spent a few minutes a day in talking with them about sex, drugs, abuse, homophobia, racism, sexism, and gangs. Taking time to talk with them, and not just talking to them.
Research is rather clear that powerful role models – important people in one’s life – can stimulate meaningful change and growth in moral development (Beller & Stoll, 2000). Research is also clear that the process of reflection is a powerful teacher. A good role model – an honorable person – who takes time to speak with young people can make differences in the moral growth of those individuals – whether they are high school athletes or collegiate athletes (Shields & Bredemeier, 2006).
I presently direct the Center for ETHICS* at the University of Idaho. How I got to this role is directly related to my coaching, well sort of. After I left coaching, I went back to school, earned a Ph.D. in sport philosophy and took a job at the University of Idaho. I was assigned to teach a class in research design. Quite unexpectedly, one of my students asked me a question that changed my life. Her question: “Are athletes as morally developed as the normal population?” As an old coach, literally and figuratively, my immediate response was, “Of course!” She retorted, “What do you know about moral development?” In truth I knew nothing. She asked if I would read what she brought me to read. I agreed and so began the journey. I discovered that what research existed about moral development wasn’t very promising or complimentary about athletics. “If you want to build character, try something else” (Ogilvie & Tutko, 1971).
My student, Chung Hae Hahm (1989) challenged me to develop an instrument to measure moral reasoning of athlete populations. After three years we had a valid and reliable measure. And that instrument, the Hahm-Beller Values Choice Inventory grew into the gold standard for measuring moral reasoning in athlete populations and has been translated into 12 different languages.
Today, we are the largest single repository of information on moral reasoning of athletics in the world. We know that the competitive experience negatively affects moral reasoning. We know that revenue producing, male, contact sport athletes score the lowest on inventories, females score higher, and that golfers, whether male or female, score the highest. We know that the longer we participate in athletics and sport the more negatively affected we are in our moral reasoning and morals (Stoll S. , Center for ETHICS*, 2014).
The original data did not and still does not make me proud. Instead, I was and am saddened that my research bludgeoned athletics and sport, things that I loved to do and things that I value. After the first study as I mourned what I found and what I intuitively knew from my own coaching, another student, Jennifer Beller (1990), challenged me to develop intervention programs to improve moral reasoning of athlete populations. Perhaps I could help coaches be better at what they do: To understand coaching is more than teaching motor skills. That coaching is a powerful platform to teach about the important lessons of life: the role of honesty, justice, and integrity.
Thus began our 30 years of intervention curriculums for competitive and athlete populations. The curriculum are available both online and in hard copy. To date our curriculum and pedagogical techniques have been used by such diverse groups as D1 college football teams (Stoll, 2012), US Marine second lieutenants (Culp, 2012), Native American children (Stoll S. , 2012), elementary character education programs (Stoll S. K., 1999), and Major League Baseball (Stoll S. K., 2007).
We have learned much. In any highly competitive environment, coaches play an important role in the moral education of athletes regardless of their ages. We also know that interventions in moral reasoning by coaches through directed and purposeful planned instruction can improve the moral reasoning of athletes (Stoll S. , 2014)? We also know that not every moral education program improves moral reasoning; a poorly constructed curriculum and pedagogy can actually have negative results (Burwell, Beller, Stoll, & Cole, 1996; Stoll, Rudd, & Beller, 1997). We have replicated our curriculum and pedagogical techniques again and again, and the same result occurs: moral-reasoning increases.
However, there is a caveat to all of this positive education – moral reasoning is only one piece of the complicated moral knowing, moral valuing, and moral action triumvirate (Lickona, 1991). Moral reasoning does not guarantee moral action. However, without moral reasoning, moral action will not occur. It is a bit like coaching – good training does not guarantee consistent winning, but without good training, winning will not happen.
I wish I had known the importance of moral education when I was coaching. I sort of intuitively knew it from my own experience of being coached but I ignored it. I could have been a better coach. You too, can be a better coach. Build a legacy you’ll be proud of by remembering that coaching is more than X’s and O’s.
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