Monday at Practice

Today’s practice started with one of the athlete’s scurrying around trying to find his gloves. He seemed to be in such a hurry because he didn’t want to be late. Finally, he finds them and then heads out to practice. There seems to be less players here today than usual. One of the coaches mentions the flu is going around. It must have hit the team pretty bad, I hope it doesn’t effect the whole team Once practice gets going, there were many mental mistakes on this Monday. It seems as though the weekend made the players a little rusty going into Monday. There were also many mistakes. The mistakes ranged from just messing up their assignments to committing penalties. The players seemed to regroup after their water break and the rest of practice ran smooth. One of our starters was sick and couldn’t make it to practice today. The backup played well and knew the assignments. He must have been taking his mental reps while he was out. Another player really was struggling dong his job at practice. His teammates encouraged him to fix the mistakes and play better. The positive words helped quite a bit for this student athlete. It is a very hot day and the players have all drank more water than usual. They are reminded to stay drinking fluids throughout the day and the rest of the night. Dehydration can be very serious, and we don’t want any of the players to be dehydrated. Today was a good day for positive words. One of the secondary players messed up his assignment. The result of the mistake was a touchdown. Instead of getting mad, the other players encouraged him to ‘get the next one.’ This athlete did improve after the mistake listening to the encouraging words. If his teammates maybe weren’t so positive, the player’s outcome could have been different. It is very important to know the individual and know what to say to him after a mistake. I think he responded really well.