d alary dalton coaching to win and teaching positive life skills through competitive sports

04/08/2023

d’Alary Dalton, Ed.D.

Power of Sport Summit

Coaching to win and teaching positive life skills in competitive sports

dalary.dalton@duxburyreef.net

“Sports best achieves its positive impact on participants and society when everyone plays to win.”

Research shows that what matters is the way sports are designed and

delivered.

Hokowhitu

Program(New Zealand)

S.U.P.E.R.GOAL

(VCU Life Skills Center)

Coaches choose where to place the emphasis

productprocess

(Siegel, 2007)

Coaches’ choices matter

What’s inside the “black box” of sports?

Picture by Hay Kranen / PD

? ??? ?

(Holt & Sehn, 2008)

A Study of 8 Women Coaches

High school coaches emphasize three important concepts:

3

Winning is an important goal.

1

“I just don’t always think you can

control the winning… I mean, the

winning is a result, it’s not the process.

The process is what interests me more

than the result. I love to win. I’m super

competitive. So that happens naturally.

I think it’s why I need to focus more on

the other things.”

(Elaine, lacrosse coach)

“…the girls had no idea whether they

were winning or losing during the

game. That shocked me. They were

just so excited that they played a game

of lacrosse they didn’t realize we had

lost. They were so excited.”

(Rachel, lacrosse coach)

Sports offer a wide variety of life skills…

2

Trying to win is a life skill.3

“I believe that if you put in the work,

sometimes you get the result you want,

and sometimes you don’t, and that’s

life, and that’s soccer, and I think you

can learn as much from losing as you

do from winning. Sometimes you learn

more from losing.”

(Sharon, soccer coach)

“There are some times when we lost,

we put it all out there, we did our

best… I always try to bring the kids

back to that after the game. How did

we play? Not did we win, did we lose,

but how did we play?”

(Olivia, water polo coach)

How do athletes understand “trying to

win”?

How does “trying to win” infl uence

coaching?

What are the costs of “trying to win”?

What do we need to know?(Issues of concern…)

04/08/2023dalary.dalton@duxburyreef.net

Questions?

04/08/2023

d’Alary Dalton, Ed.D.

Power of Sport Summit

Coaching to win and teaching positive life skills in competitive sports

dalary.dalton@duxburyreef.net

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