3 Questions I Ask Every Parent Before The Season

How you run your parent meeting decides if parents trust you or fight you all season. Learn more about the mental training program I use here → https://coachfreetraining.com

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⏰ Key Timestamps:
00:00 Why Parent Communication Matters
00:18 Shifting My Coaching Approach
00:50 Sharing Your Story to Build Trust
01:33 Free Mental Training Resource
02:01 The Note Card Activity
03:15 Building a Parent Partnership
03:46 Wrapping Up: Mission, Values, and Mental Game

👋🏼 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.

Your first parent meeting sets the tone for your whole season, whether you realize it or not. I used to think my job was to coach and their job was to support without question, and that approach created more drama, not less.

What You'll Learn:
✅ Why leading with your accolades in a parent meeting backfires, and what to share instead
✅ The exact note card activity I run at every preseason parent meeting
✅ Three rotating questions that get parents to open up instead of shut down
✅ How to signal partnership with parents instead of gatekeeping
✅ Why this matters more than your rules and boundaries talk

💬 Coaches — comment below: What's the one question you wish every parent would answer honestly before the season starts?

P.S. A few stats worth knowing:
👉Coaches' communication gaps and favoritism account for roughly 15% of parents' competitive stressors related to their child's sport participation (Eckardt, Dorsch & Lobinger, Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 2022)
👉 Youth sports parents report more trust in their child's coach than in national, state, and community leaders, or in their child's school and teachers (Aspen Institute Project Play, State of Play 2022)
👉 56% of coaches who experienced verbal harassment or abuse identified parents as the most common source (U.S. Center for SafeSport, 2025 National Coaches Survey)

The Coach Her Game YouTube channel is hosted by The Elite Competitor and is dedicated to helping coaches of girl athletes strengthen their mental game and team culture in order to develop a competitive edge.

#parentcommunication #coachinggirls #youthathletics #mentalperformance

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

Transcript

1:04

I have my preseason parent meeting coming up, and it reminded me of an activity that I do at these meetings to help establish a better relationship with the parents of my athletes and also avoid the drama that happens in the season. Because I used to, when I was first coaching, think parents should stay away. My job was to coach, and their job is to support, no questions asked. And surprise, surprise, that added a lot more drama to my team and to the season. And so I've shifted my approach over the years. I've been coaching for 14 years and, now I do a couple of things differently, especially in the preseason parent meeting, because that establishes the, tone for your season. It invites parents or, gives them the reason to not trust you. So one thing that I do is this, little note card activity. I started changing how I ran these parent meetings. I started sharing a little bit more of my story. Yeah, it's great, you won four state championships. You go- you played volleyball in college, all of that. They wanna know, How are you gonna help my daughter? Do you care about her more than just what she can do on the volleyball court? They wanna connect with you as a person and hear a little bit of your story, and that's how they establish trust with you. So I started adding in a little bit more of that. That required me to be a little bit more vulnerable about why I coach. And again, it's not just about the accolades and, like, all the things you've accomplished as a coach because yeah, those are cool, but, more like what led you here, why... you're gonna be spending more time with these parents' kids than they are during the season, so they wanna know, can they trust you. So I started sharing a little bit more of my story, why I coach, and the mission and the vision of the program early, and what we value. A lot of that being the mental side of the game and the emotional side of the game, and how I am passionate about, athletes' mental health, and how we actually carve time out of practice to do that on a weekly basis. If you wanna learn about that specifically because if you're like, "I'm passionate about that too, then but how do you do it?" Then go to our free training. I cover all of it at coachfreetraining.com. Really easy way to get started with how you can actually train them on the mental side of the game, and it makes a big difference when I share this with parents. They're like, "Yes. Finally, somebody who is going to be talking about this, besides me." You know, 'cause they're there trying to help their They're like, you know, "Be more confident. Bounce back faster." But that car ride home is probably, making things worse for her and making things worse for you to try and, coach through that situation. So go to coachfreetraining.com. I'll break it all down for you. But this other activity I started doing, is I give all of the parents a note card at my parent meeting, and I ask them a couple of questions. I'll tell you the questions, and I'll tell you, like, why this actually helps. So the questions I kinda rotate through are, what do you hope for your daughter? This season that has nothing to do with the stats and the playing time. So basically, like what do you hope she takes from this season? Okay, so that's one question. Two is, what do I need to know as a coach about your daughter that I might not know? All right? So this just invites parents to share anything going on. Is there just any, any other thing that I need to know about your daughter that will help me more effectively coach them, okay? A third that I rotate through is there a value at home that you are trying to communicate that I can reinforce here? Again, communicating that like we care about more than just the physical game. We care about your athlete as a person, and we want to reinforce values as well that you're trying to establish at home. And so this did a lot actually because what it is communicating with your parents is that you're in a partnership with them, that you care about their input. And of course in your parent meeting, you're going to be talking about how your expectations around communication and boundaries around communication, so all of that. But basically this signals to parents that like you care about their input, you are on a team with parents for the benefit of their athlete, and you wanna know. You wanna know what's going on so that you can most effectively coach them. I would get so much insight from these cards, but also have parents talk to me like after the meeting or on days later. They're like, "I really appreciate you asking those questions because, I need a coach to know this about my daughter." It just opens up more lines of communication as well in a really healthy way. So you can steal that. You can do this little note card activity with your parents at your next parent meeting. It makes a big difference. But obviously, make sure that you're also talking about things at your parent meeting, like your mission, your values, how you actually enforce those values. So again, for us, we talk a lot about the mental side of the game and how important it is, how important it is that athletes are confident and have skills to come back from mistakes, have skills to navigate pressure, expectations, comparison. Athletes aren't typically taught these skills, and they're not born with them. And so we talk about how we do plug and play Elite Mental Game for teams. That's our mental training program.

Speaker 5:24

Again, if you wanna learn more, go to coachfreetraining.com. I lay it all out. And then do things like this to show your parents that like you're on the same team, and you are together for the benefit of the athlete. All right. Hopefully, this was helpful to you. Go to Coach Free Training if you wanna learn more about mental training, and head to the next video, and I'll see you there.