Coaching Female Athletes: 3 Things Every High School Coach Needs to Know

Coaching girls is different—and if you don’t know these 3 things, you’re making it harder on yourself (and them). Check it out and then grab our free training on how to build mental toughness → https://coachfreetraining.com

Coaching girl athletes takes more than just good drills and game plans—it requires understanding what’s happening beneath the surface. In this video, I’m breaking down three crucial lessons every middle school and high school coach should know to help their female athletes play with more confidence, resilience, and connection.

From building mental toughness with simple daily routines, to creating a safe and supportive environment where athletes can take risks and bounce back from mistakes—you’ll get actionable tips you can use immediately to strengthen your team’s performance and connection.

✨ Inside this video, you’ll discover:
 ✔️ How to help girls separate performance from self-worth
 ✔️ Why daily mindset check-ins can prevent emotional breakdowns at practice
 ✔️ What "psychological safety" really looks like for female athletes (and how to create it)
 ✔️ How to use a Snapback Routine to recover faster from mistakes
 ✔️ The power of team connection outside of the sport itself

🎤 I'm Coach Bre — a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a 4x state champion volleyball coach. I help coaches like you develop strong cultures, confident leaders, and teams that thrive beyond just wins and losses.

🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction and Post-Practice Reflection 
00:32 Emotional Challenges in Coaching Girls 
02:11 Mental Training and Its Importance 
04:39 Building a Supportive Environment 
07:23 Final Thoughts and Resources

💬Coaches – comment below: Which of these 3 strategies do you want to focus on with your team first?

📌 Want to take your team’s mental game to the next level?
🔹 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

1:06

All right. I just got done with practice. I'm at home, but I haven't gone in my house yet. Any other coaches do that? Like don't wanna go in yet because I'm just kind of processing what happened at practice today. And I've been coaching girls, girls volleyball for the past 14 years, but. Kind of the, the differences in coaching girls and what we as coaches need to know about, about it. So at practice today pretty standard, normal practice. It's a Friday though, so my girls have been through it this week. We had games, um, you know, training schedules stuff. By the time Friday hits, like a lot has happened. But today, um, we are doing a serve receive drill. and I could tell like one of my players, her body language just kind of started shifting. She was shank some balls, meaning that she wasn't really like playing her best, but had shanked a few in a row. And then finally after. A while, I could tell like the tears were coming and this happens from time to time. Like I said, if you coach girls, you probably have had this happen where like somebody starts crying on the court and you're like, where did that come from? And um, yeah, she was like trying to hide it. And so we called the water break and I. Called her over and I'm like, what's going on? And then all of a sudden she just like cries even more and more. And I was kind of interesting right before this, I was like talking to my assistant coach who is a male, and I was like, do you see what's going on here? And he's like, no, I didn't notice anything. And it's just so interesting'cause that that's like not the first time that that's happened either. I'm like, did you see that? Did you see that? Did you see her respond that way? Or like her body language shift. And he's always like, Nope. So there is also a difference when you're. I believe when you're a female coach, you like can kind of key in on some of these things. But anyways, turns out she's like overwhelmed, got a lot going on at school, was frustrated with herself that she's shaking passes. And honestly I was like, you're not actually playing that bad, but okay. Like in her mind she was okay and it was just compounding on each other. And the first piece of this that I'm like, this kind of is a common theme. When, when it comes to coaching girls is that if you don't allow space as coaches, if we don't allow space for some of this emotion to come out and allow for them to process a little bit, it's gonna come out anyways. And on Fridays, I actually, I didn't do it today. Normally we do like a little bit before practice, like, um, with our daily mindset routine. We do a lot of mental training, um, in our program and the like, kind of bread and butter of what we do is this like five to seven minute mental training thing before practice. But I didn't do it today because I was like, it's Friday and uh, I wanna get out faster and all this. Well, it turns out like that maybe made a difference. So, um, it's a combination of like some journaling where they can get some emotion out, like kind of process their day a little bit. They also do. Five minutes of, of visualization called brave. So it's like breath work. They, they inhale, they say their reset word, they exhale, they do a little visualization and like, it just helps'em start practice with more of like a clear mind. I wa I waste less time. But today I was like, no, we're not gonna do it. And then, you know, here we go. So if you don't allow for some of this, um, space to emotionally help them process, then it's gonna come out and it's probably gonna come out in tears and. Breakdowns and, and things like that. So that's kind of the first thing. But the other thing that I often see with girl athletes is that they tie so much of how they feel about themselves to their performance. And there's like this perfectionism that like is always seeping under the surface. And it's like, if I can't be perfect or do this. You know, just right then I'm not good enough. And a lot of this like self-worth that they're, you know, not just self-worth, but just like how they feel, um, that day is based on how they're performing. And I know that's like also human nature. Um, but we need to support them with skills to be able to delink who they are from what they do. And we need to support them with skills on how to get over mistakes faster. Because like this player that was. Ruminating over these mistakes and you know, it was really causing her to not only just like make money. It could have, it could have been like one mistake and then, all right, move on, next ball, next play.'cause she got a ton of opportunities and a ton of reps in this practice. It was no like one turned into two and three and four and now all of a sudden she's like, I'm having a terrible practice. When like if she were to able, and we do teach a snapback routine. Um. Like a, just a really simple way for her to, for all my athletes to come back. But, you know, sometimes they forget they have some of these skills and it's my job as a coach to remind them. Um, but if she's not using that, then like of course she's gonna let one mistake turn into two and three and four, and then it's gonna turn into like this bigger thing than it, it really needs to be. So there's that. Um, and then the last thing that this just reminded me of with coaching girls is. If they don't feel safe to take risks, if they don't feel safe in their environment, then they're not going. To take risks and we as coaches want them to take risks. We want them to like go for the, go for it and be aggressive. And a lot of times athletes, girl athletes won't because they're afraid of making a mistake. They're afraid of letting the people around them down and they don't. Feel necessarily safe. Like we have to develop that safe and that supportive environment. So thankfully with this athlete, like we do have things in place like this, but like I said, I didn't do some of my normal things on this day. But we have like systems in place to help check in, but um, part of the way that they can really feel safe. And if you've ever heard that phrase like girls need to, um. Not have fun. They need to feel good to win and boys need to win to feel good. And part of that like feeling good. I know that's, I don't know if that's based in any research, but I would still, I would say from like anecdotal. I don't know, experience that that is basically true, that they need to like feel good, not, not only about themselves, so building them up with their confidence, with their mental gain, but also with their team. And so we started implementing, um, and I need to get back to this too, just check-ins. Like check-ins with the team. Um, we call these open circle meetings where they're sharing things outside of volleyball, so they're connecting with each other. Um, and that helps them trust each other and they feel like they belong more because when they feel like they belong, they feel safe and then they can take risks. Um, same thing with like being able to have an environment where they can fail and as coaches giving them opportunities to, to fail. So anyways, I know this is a lot, but it's a lot that that came up for me when I was like, oh, okay, like. You know, a lot of athletes, especially girls, like they can deal with a lot and then all of a sudden it becomes too much and. When it does, I need to look at like, do I have these things in place? Do we have, um, an opportunity for the girls to connect with each other every week outside of just talking about volleyball? Am I connecting with my athletes? Like, am I doing my one-on-one meetings? Am I checking in before practice Connect before Correct. Is another thing that like we've gotta remember to do. Are we allowing them space? To get their emotions and process that a little bit before practice so that it's not coming out in practice. So anyways, just some things on my mind. I know that a lot of you have been in this situation too, where you're like, whoa, coaching girls is like way more of an emotional thing than I ever thought it was. Um, well, you're not alone. Um, I am going through it with you. I am, you know, experiencing it. I'm in the trenches. Um, so I'm. I'm doing my best to practice what I preach as well, and I do have a free training where I go over a lot of this and the things that I do in my program. Um, the things that can help you as a coach, just like really simply implement mental training and, and do some of these. Strategies and these tactics,'cause they really don't take a lot of time. But at this point in the season, I'm like, do we really need to, you know, I kind of fall into that trap too. And it's like, yes we do, because when we do, things go a lot smoother. So anyways, the link for that is below. That's also at coachfreetraining.com. So check that out if you want some simple strategies around this. Okay, I think I've vent enough and now I get to go inside to see my family.