Real Coach Q&A: Handling Team Drama, Moving Players, and Building Mental Toughness

Varsity drama? Roster moves? Meltdowns? Here’s exactly how I handle them in-season. Grab the free coach training → https://coachfreetraining.com

If you’re a high school coach who cares about more than Xs & Os, this episode tackles real questions from our Coaches Hotline. I break down how to: move players to a lower team (without destroying buy-in), handle team drama when younger athletes join, and rebuild mental toughness after a game-day spiral. You’ll get exact phrasing for tough talks, a clear standards matrix you can enforce, and plug-and-play frameworks including Snapback Routine, Open Circle prompts, role-ownership check-ins that you can run this week! 

I’m Coach Bre, a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a long-time head volleyball coach and 4-time state champion.

🎯 Learn tips to address:
✅ Moving Players: Clear criteria, honest convo, ownership, check-ins, opportunity.
✅ Team Drama: Standards matrix, Open Circle, mentor pairs, address directly.
✅ Post-Error Resets: Snapback routine, quick reflections, practice tie-ins.
✅ Plug & Play: Embed mental training, no extra minutes, winning habits.

🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction and Preview
01:42 Question 1: Moving Players Down a Level
04:51 Question 2: Handling Team Drama
11:35 Question 3: The Snapback Routine
13:28 Closing and Resources

These tips are all rooted in sports psychology, mental performance, and offer time-efficient mental training strategies that fit inside your current practice plan. Have a question of your own? Send it to the hotline: https://www.videoask.com/f30gom2dt

📢 Coaches – comment below: Which issue are you dealing with right now—player movement, drama, or post-error resets—and what’s your next step? 👇

📌 Free Tools & Next Steps
🔹 Grab our in-depth FREE training → https://coachfreetraining.com
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Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

1:04

Today I'm tackling some real life coaching questions that I received on our coaches hotline. These are things and situations that. Are not taught in the drills, in the practice plans when you become a coach, but they are definitely the things that can make or break a season. I had three coaches call in and ask me some wonderful questions that I'm going to be addressing. Everything from how to move someone from varsity down to jv. That can be tricky. How to handle teammate dynamics when younger players join the team and how to get players to show up mentally tough. After they make mistakes and how to handle the pressure of the moment. So let's get into it. I want you to hear straight from these coaches and some of my take on how I would go about the situation. So let's hear from coach number one. His name is Dustin. Hi, my name is Coach Dustin down Hower with the Dallas Lions High school baseball team. We're a homeschool team. Um, one of the questions that I have for you would be. At the varsity level, we're actually, as we are formulating teams, uh, we have a freshman, sophomore team, JV and varsity team. And this year I find myself, uh, with the possibility of taking some players that played JV last year and they were freshmen and having to move them down to the freshman, sophomore team. And people that are incoming freshmen, uh, might possibly beat them out. How do you handle that with players that have been with you previously and then help them transition to respond properly, to moving from JV to a sophomore, uh, freshman team, uh, in that scenario? Okay, this is a tough one. I was mistaken it wasn't varsity down to jv. JV down to freshman team. But still, when you are considering this as a coach, moving somebody from a team that they were on previously to a lower team the next year, there's no way around it. This is really tough. So the first thing though, that you have to make sure is clear is. What your, what your criteria is for picking teams when it comes to tryouts. Make it very clear that rosters are not about seniority or last year's placement, but about the current readiness and fit of your team as a coach. Personally, I try to avoid the saddle costs. I try to avoid moving players down, so, but a lot of times you can't avoid that. So even though I, I, I try to, based on. What I know about the future of the program and who's coming in and all of that. Sometimes you get what you get and then the next year you're like, this talent is better. And so that's why it's very important that you're clear right out the gate. Regardless of that, it can still be a blow to an athlete to be moved down. As much as you wanna frame this as an opportunity, not a demotion, we really have to make sure that we are. Explaining this to players in a way that is very honest, but also, um, taking into consideration how they're going to respond, which is the tough line that the coaches always have to walk, right? You've gotta give brutally honest information and information that they don't poten particularly want to hear. And then you've gotta put like your, your quote unquote therapist hat on to help them through that emotion of the information that you just gave them. And so. As much as possible, you just need to be honest. You need to say, last year this is what our situation was. We made decisions based on what we had last year. This year we have to look at the roster and what we have coming in, and as a program, we need to make sure that we are policing players. Appropriately for their growth and for their current growth in the program. And so just make it very clear, but also frame this, as I said, as an opportunity as much as possible, more reps, more development, more chance to impact the team. And so that is, that's kind of the move that you have to do. And then just know that it is going to be challenging for these players. So you might have to check up on them. You've gotta check in with them. Um, probably on a weekly basis just to make sure that they're, you know, accepting their role, that they're doing a good job and give them some sort of leadership role. And this is a real life lesson in resilience in how to respond, which is why it's really important that athletes do have mental skills and they have ways to navigate some of the thoughts that are probably gonna pop up in their head of like, not good enough and all that. And so that's why we teach athletes just really, really simple skills to be able to manage some of these thoughts that are probably gonna be popping up in. Their head. And if you wanna learn more about those specific tools, you can go to coach free training.com and I break it down for you there. But yeah, I don't envy you as a coach because this is tough. But, um, takeaways are, make sure you're very clear about your selection criteria so they know right out the gate that this is a possibility. Um, be honest about why they're moving and then give them some sort of role. Frame it as an opportunity and check in with them. So that's the best you can do. Um, if I were there in your situation. That's, that's the move I would go with. All right, let's hear from Heidi, who has a tough teammate dynamic going on. Hey, coach Bree. Uh, I'm a varsity volleyball coach. My question is definitely around team drama. Brought up some talented sophomores to varsity. Have some seniors who are being mean girls, they aren't doing it in my presence. They aren't acting that way at practice. It's nothing that I'm seeing. It's more things I'm hearing about at school and little, uh, just. Not nice things, things that are definitely, uh, hurting the sophomores and making them doubt their confidence. Trying to figure out how to best approach it without outing anyone. Um, specific situations that I wouldn't know about if someone hadn't shared with them with me. And I don't wanna put the sophomores anymore in the cross hairs than they already are anyway. Could use some help with, uh, just addressing kindness. That's a tough one too. And one that I've been in before. So I can kind of speak from experience here, but this first has to go back to what standards, um, you're establishing from the beginning of your program. And I'm sure you've already done this, but for those coaches who, who haven't are starting the season, it's really important to. Start your season with an understanding of what your core values are. So we have four in our program. Attitude, effort, integrity, unity. We literally create a matrix around that and we say, what does this actually look like? What does Unity? I would say that this would fall into the Unity one. What does Unity look like? In the classroom, what does it look like on the court? What does it look like? Um, you know, at practice, in downtime, all of those things so that you can be very clear on what those behaviors actually look like. So Unity looks like supporting each other off the court, defending each other. Um, it doesn't look like talking behind each other's backs, like be very specific about the behavior so that you have something to fall back on so that it's like, Hey, this is not what we do in our program and this is what we do now. One thing I would. Like to, you know, whenever athletes are acting this way, really it's just like human behavior, right? Why? Why is this happening? Let's try and figure out like what's the most generous interpretation of what could be going on, why these seniors are doing this. And likely it's because they're acting out of insecurity, fear of losing their status, lack of leadership skills. And so yes, it is coming out as mean girl behavior and it's totally unacceptable. I think trying to draw and follow the thread back on. Why do you think this is happening? Um, it's probably because they are insecure and that's where, you know, training their confidence and training their mental game comes into play because. Confident athletes don't tear down other people's, a other people, right? Confident athletes don't feel the need to put underclassmen under them and be mean to them. And so that's why we spend a lot of time developing individual confidence in our program because we know that. That's where it starts. Okay. Now fear of losing status, maybe one of these underclassmen is gonna take their spot. Lack of leadership skills. So that just helps us kind of as a starting ground of where, where to go now. Uh, assuming that you've already addressed the whole team about you know, what we stand for and what behaviors are acceptable and unacceptable and what are non-negotiable standards, then we can work from from there. So some ways that I would go is I would actually. Try to develop the leadership of these seniors. I would give them leadership roles and put them in charge of one of these sophomores. Um, I wouldn't say maybe in charge isn't the right word, but they kind of like a buddy system, like they're a mentor and I would speak to them individually. I wouldn't, uh, I mean, I guess you could speak to them as a group, but I find more success when I'm talking one-on-one with an athlete and I'm saying things like, I see you as a leader on this team and you have so much, um, influence. And one of the ways that I want to leverage your influence is by helping some of these underclassmen. Um, you know, assimilate to the team in a really positive way. And so I see you as a, um, as a mentor to, you know, one of the underclassmen. And do you think you can take it in your, in your, under your leadership role and in your, under your wings, um, to, to have this player with you? For the season, you're gonna check in with them, um, you know, and just give them very specific things so that they feel like they have a role and they're tasked with this responsibility. Because right now what's happening is this like pack like mentality where it's the seniors together in, in a negative way. So I would develop some leadership around that and give them. Give them a role and make one of those roles be some sort of mentor For the underclassmen, I would also use structured connection. So every Friday we do team check-ins. So we get together, it's only about 15 minutes and we do something called the open circle method. And I have a, a video on how I run open circles, but I start that with a prompt and it's designed to help athletes share a little bit about themselves outside of. Their sport. So a simple one is rose thorn, bud. We've done hero hardship, highlight, we've done, um, share something that's on your head and something on your heart. And I lead this and I, you know, I model appropriate vulnerability when it comes to this. I share, um, you know, things that are just a little bit deeper that they might not know. And that helps because then it sets the tone for them to do the same. And when these seniors are hearing from sophomores and sophomores are hearing from seniors about things that are like, oh wow, you're actually struggling with something that I am too, and you're, you know, you're a human. That also just helps kind of with the collective trust of the team. Um, I would also support the sophomores. Separately, I would remind them that like, you have earned your role on this team. You don't need to give your power away to a senior, be the teammate and the leader that you want to have in this moment. And this is also a learning opportunity for when you become a senior, how you don't want to act. Okay. If this is, you know, something that continues to come up because you can only do what you can do as a coach. But I think these are good places to start. Make sure your standards are. Are good and locked in address the whole team about non-negotiables. Um, you know, give those seniors some leadership roles and, and talk about leadership, some development there. Uh, remind the sophomores that they deserve to be there and to control what they can control. And really big picture. You're not just fixing drama, you're coaching leadership, you're coaching maturity, you're coaching confidence. And so I think that could be a good, um, place to start. Obviously, it's also well within your rights as a coach to address straight on any negative behavior that you do witness. I know you're hearing this like secondhand, which makes it a little bit harder. Um, but if you are like, no, that is unacceptable. Um. Then call you. You obviously can call things out like that, but as we know as coaches, these are all nuanced things and conversations that we have. So that is how I would address this knowing that this is coming through the grapevine and it's not something that I personally witnessed. Okay. We have one more question from a coach to answer. His name is Matthew. Good morning. My name is Matt. I'm an, uh, new assistant coach of volleyball in Georgia, and I'm wondering if you're going to do your. Snapback routine course if you're going to offer that. Our girls recently had a meltdown. Nobody was playing well and we couldn't ever recover from it. So I'm really interested in the snapback routine. I've watched a bunch of your free trainings and your coaches round table, and I'm really interested in this. Uh, the snapback. Thank you, Matt. I'm glad you brought this up. So the snapback routine is one of our, um, number one skills that athletes learn to learn how to come back in a competition when they are spiraling or in practice when they're just kind of like thrown out of flow state. Um, it's very tangible. It's combination of a breath, a reset word, a reset signal. It's actually part of our plug and play elite mental game training system for coaches. So plug and play is our. Mental training system, it's for coaches to implement very easily with their teams. You don't need a sports psychology degree. You don't need a lot of time. I do this with my team. Um, we have been doing it with my team for about six years. You get your team together, play short videos. They get the skill, they implement it in a practice and in training, and they are. Often off to the races and, um, it's a really easy way for you to incorporate mental training. So yes, absolutely. Um, in order to grab, plug and play, I'll leave the link below. And the snapback routine is the first thing that we teach inside. Plug and Play Elite Mental Game for teams. So happy to provide that resource for you. Um, that along with everything else that athletes learn, really do help them, um, show up mentally when it matters and deal with the pressure and deal with the comparison, deal with the, the drama better that happens in sports. So you can grab that below and there's actually a discount if you use that link in, um, in the, the show notes below. All right, coaches, thank you for submitting those questions. I hope this was helpful. I know that coaching is not something that there's a, a handbook on like all these. Yeah, we have the drills, we've got all this stuff, but all this, the culture, the mental game, you know, what do you do with team drama that those are the things that are really tough. So if you would like to submit a question for our coach's hotline, I'll also leave the link in the show notes and in the description below so you can call in and I'll answer your question on the show. I'll see you next time.