Rookie Coaching Mistakes: 3 Things New High School Coaches Should Avoid

New to coaching or stepping into a new program? Avoid these top coaching mistakes that could derail your season. Learn more about building a mentally tough team here → https://coachfreetraining.com 👈

In this episode, I break down the exact mistakes I made early in my coaching career — and how YOU can avoid them to become a more confident, effective leader. Whether you're coaching high school girls teams or just want to build a stronger program from the inside out, these tips will save you time, stress, and burnout. 💥

These aren’t just technical fixes — they’re real stories and game-changing shifts around leadership, culture, and the mental and emotional side of coaching girl athletes. You’ll walk away with tangible, honest insights that most new coaches don’t learn until it’s too late.

Learn how to: 
✔️ Avoid over-coaching & control traps
 ✔️ Implement mental training techniques that actually work
 ✔️ Communicate roles clearly (to reduce playing time drama)
 ✔️ Empower athletes and lead with clarity, not chaos

👋 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 4x state champion. I created this channel to help coaches like you lead with confidence, build winning cultures, and grow strong female athletes on and off the court. 💪

🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction and Personal Story
00:27 Mistake #1: Over Coaching and Proving Yourself
03:55 Mistake #2: Ignoring the Mental Side of the Game
06:14 Mistake #3: Poor Communication
08:32 Conclusion and Next Steps

💬 Coaches – comment below: Which rookie mistake did you make early in your coaching career?

Want the mental tools your athletes need to thrive? 
🔹 Grab our FREE training for coaches → https://coachfreetraining.com
🔹 Follow us on IG → @elitecompetitorcoach
🔹 Check out our plug & play elite mental game info → https://elitecompetitor.com/plugplayemg

Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

Speaker: 1:04

Coaches don't make the same rookie mistakes that I did within the first few years of being a head coach. I went into that first head coaching job thinking I had it all figured out. I had the energy, I had the game plan. I knew the game, but what I didn't know was how do you actually lead, build a culture, and create mentally strong teams? And guess how many games we won that first season? Just one. So if you are a coach who's stepping into a new program or you're trying to build something from the ground up, this video is for you. Let's get into it. Mistake number one, trying to coach to prove. What does this mean? I thought I was under a microscope when I first took over the head coaching job, which a lot of us do feel. You feel like you've gotta prove yourself. However, and I was young, I was 22 years old when I became a head coach. However, how this manifested itself for me was I was in control of everything. I did not let my assistants have any say in anything. I didn't let my leaders have any say. And those of you that are coaching high schoolers know that that doesn't go over very well when this Gen Z doesn't really have a say and what they're doing. But I took all of that control onto myself. I felt like I had to be in control and responsible for every single part of my program. From the transportation request to the game plan, to the practice planning, to the jerseys, to the shirts. Like it's no wonder I was burnt out by the time I was in my, like third year. I had to take a hole vacation to recover from the season because I was literally doing everything. And this caused some problems for me. Not only was I burnt out and stretched too thin, but I also wasn't allowing my. My coaches to lead in a way that was actually serving my team and helping me out. I also wasn't allowing my leaders to have any voice. My team leaders or people who were, you know, really in control of the culture. When it came down to it, my players themselves, I was feeling like I just had to do it all. I also was over coaching. I thought that if I just could talk more and explain more that. They would get better and we would win more. When in reality it was overwhelming them. It was too much. It was confusing them, and it wasn't actually helping our success. So what to do instead? Instead of this, instead of over coaching and coaching to try and prove yourself. I want you to, and I'm gonna challenge you to delegate. How are you going to. Move some of this off your plate and onto your assistant coaches and onto your team leaders or your captains. And this could be as simple as my captains are gonna be in control of the warmup. I'm gonna work with my captains to, um, be in control of that part of the game. It could be giving like a meaningful role to one of your assistants, maybe. They're going to do one section of practice. So, um, I would have my assistants run like a blocking drill and really break down blocking. So I'm giving them more a voice, more of an autonomy in, um, in our training so that when they're sitting on the bench at the game, now that my players are, are able to interact with them more and they're able to, um, get coaching from them. Like it just really has this trickle down effect and stop over coaching your players. Ask them more questions, they have the answers and they're actually, even if they don't like find, allowing them to help find the answers in themselves is actually gonna help them learn more and grow more as a player than you just trying to impart your knowledge on them and just hope that they just get better based on that, when really you're just confusing them and you're over coaching them. So that is mistake number one. Coaching to prove over coaching. Tying also what comes along with that is tying your feelings about yourself and how you show up to the wins and the losses,'cause that can be very challenging as well. And by the way, if I have not met you, I'm Coach Bre. I am a Mental Performance Coach for girl athletes. I'm also a longtime head volleyball coach. I've been in it for about 14 years. I've won four state championships as a coach, but the reason why I'm here now is to help coaches be able to build a culture that they're proud of, and I want you to avoid the mistakes that I have made. So, number one, stop over coaching your players. Stop coaching to try and prove things. Let's get back to basics, delegate and add some autonomy to your practices and to your training. Mistake number two, ignoring the mental side of the game. The mental and emotional side. I didn't think that it was my job as a coach to teach this. I kind of buried my head in the sand and I was like, you just need to be mentally tough. You need to, you guys need to come back faster. And just kind of told them like, this is how it needs to be. But they had no skills to actually do that. And I was in back to back seasons with a very talented team where my, my team lost in this winner to state loser out situation. And we shouldn't have quote unquote Okay. Because. We were talented and we had gotten far and you know, we had the skills to be able to do it, but what happened under pressure, we cracked. We didn't have the skills we lost in this reverse sweep style. So if you know volleyball, you know that's not good. You, we won the first two sets and then lost the last three, same style two years in a row. I had a look at myself after that and realized. You know what? It's not my player's fault that this is ha that this is happening. We are not training any part of this game. And so that's actually what kickstarted my journey to become a mental performance coach and to kind of go down this, but you don't have to be a mental performance coach to teach these skills to your team. So I started incorporating really simple things like breath work, a little visualization, a snapback routine affiliate. It's basically a failure recovery system so they can get over mistakes faster. Um, a, a daily mindset routine that they do for five minutes at the start of practice that actually saves us practice time. So. All of these little things infused in the program. It's no wonder that I started implementing this about six years ago. In the past four years, we have one state, and that's really where the mental training has really shown itself, was in these pressure moments, in these moments where they have to, they have to rise up, they have to get over the mistakes fast, okay? They can't dwell on them. We have to be this team that is not on a rollercoaster in order to perform well when it matters most. Now, if you wanna learn some of these skills for yourself. Head to our free coach training. This is, this is where I break it down. I teach you some of these skills as well, and you also can learn about our plug and play program for teams that you can do this with your team. So that's at coach free training.com where you can start learning some of these skills. All right, that's mistake number two. One was over coaching. Coaching to prove kind of tying your self worth to your wins and your losses. That is never fun. Number two, ignoring the mental and emotional side of the game. You're a coach. You cannot just coach the physical skills. I, I know it's hard because you're like, I don't really know how I give you the resources. Go to coach free training.com. I'll take care of it for you. Okay? But don't ignore that side of the game number three. Bad communication. Bad communication with my players and my parents. It only took one late night parent email saying, my daughter's devastated. She doesn't understand her role, why she's not playing. And I was like, what the heck? I feel like it's crystal clear, right? In my mind it was. It wasn't to my players. It wasn't to my parents. And when you have. Poor communication. You're not communicating athlete roles. You are like, what I did was kind of keep parents at arms length because I thought that they only came with problems. That actually creates more problems because now people are in the dark around communication. They are making up stories. They have no other re like they, they have no other way not to because you haven't given them any sort of communication about this. So clear is kind and. Over communicating is what you need to be doing. All right? And so what I started implementing in our program was a way for athletes to know what their role is and how much playing time is associated with it. And part of that is making sure that you have roles created in your program and roles of significance. Okay, so what are the roles on your team, not just starter or non-starter, okay. What? What are they like? List them out. And a role on your team should not be the cheerleader on the bench. I'm just gonna say it. That is not a good role for a player. Player. Doesn't, and, you know, yes. You're like, well, I, I had this one player who really likes to, to, you know, she's the hype person. Give them a significant role. Yes, that can be part of it, but create roles for your players so that they are empowered and they feel like they're part of it. Okay. Um, same thing for practice. Doing starters versus non-starters is the easiest way to divide your team. Okay. So how can you make sure that you are getting coaching equitable to all of your players, but you're also mixing this up so that everybody is getting better? Okay. And that role clarity. Um, we actually have role clarity meetings. We, um, lifts out like a player impact plan that brings in what their goals are for the season, what their impact is that we see on the team this season. We also share this with their parents, so we share this, we talk about it in the parent meeting around like, what your. Role is what the playing time is, what goals we have for you, here's what you need to work on. And sharing that with their parents ensures that their parents are on the same page because you know that that communication does not always, doesn't always land from from athlete to parent. And that's when you get parent emails back. So just that one thing has really helped. And if you wanna learn more about this. Okay, so this is like. One of the mistakes. Remember, number one, mistake over coaching and you know, thinking that you have to prove yourself. Number two, ignoring the mental and emotional part of the game. Number three, this is big poor communication, but if you wanna learn more about how to create a player impact plan, how to create role clarity, you wanna check out our next video. It is called the Role clarity Blueprint, how to reduce. Playing time issues. So this is where I break down exactly how you can do that with your team and the templates that I use to do that. So head to that next video so that you can create that for your team. It's gonna be a game changer. I will see you there.