How To Be a Better Coach (Encore)

How To!

Slate Magazine

Business, Education, How To, Self-improvement

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Kelly volunteered to be the head coach for his son’s baseball team, he was nervous. He had no formal training, but he knew he wanted his players to have equal playing time—and have fun. Which they did, until the yelling started and the season ended in a stunning loss (and quite a few tears). What can Kelly do better next season? In this encore episode of How To! from 2021, Amanda Ripley connects Kelly with Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion and The Coach’s Guide to Teaching. Doug shares some fantastic advice for commanding attention (and managing failure) that we can all learn from, on or off the field. If you liked this episode, check out Congrats, You Won the Olympics. Now What? Do you have a question that requires Ted Lasso-grade inspiration? Send us a note at [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen. This episode was produced by Derek John and Rosemary Belson. Get more of How To! with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of How To! and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the How To! show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/howtoplus for access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, how to listeners, it's Carvel. If you've ever been a coach, you know that you can't just
0:04.8	push your athletes all the time. Rest is just as important as conditioning. So while the how-to
0:10.8	team takes a break this week, please enjoy this episode about how to be a better coach, which we
0:16.5	produced back in 2021. If your kids are registered for youth sports this fall, and especially if
0:21.9	you coach young athletes, then you're going to love this one. But the takeaways from this
0:26.0	episode about motivating people and turning mistakes into victories and dealing with
0:30.8	backseat coaches are actually relevant for anyone who in their everyday life has to either coach
0:36.6	or be coached. So we hope you enjoy it. And we'll
0:40.0	be back next week with a brand new episode. And without further ado, here is our former host and
0:45.8	a former youth soccer coach, the great Amanda Ripley.
0:51.1	Welcome to how to. I'm Amanda Ripley. As a reporter, I've been in a lot of uncomfortable places. I've been in prisons, crack houses, hurricanes, but I never got as nervous as I did on the sidelines of a soccer field coaching a bunch of 10-year-old boys. I mean, I've played soccer my whole life, and I was always
1:12.0	solidly mediocre, but through a series of events, I ended up coaching my son's soccer team for about
1:18.1	five years. And, I mean, I hate to admit this, but I can still remember my stomach tensing up
1:24.7	during those games, the feeling of absolute elation when my players scored,
1:30.1	and profound despair when they lost, all of which I hid from them, of course, most of the time.
1:38.2	Anyway, it was just way harder than I expected, so I have a lot of sympathy for this week's listener.
1:45.7	My name is Kelly. I'm 46. I live in just outside of Seattle, Washington. Kelly is the father of two boys,
1:53.7	aged 11 and 8. His younger son, Benjamin, is the athlete of the family. So got him into t-ball a
1:59.9	couple years ago and saw a real lack of
2:01.9	participation from the other parents. So I, after a lot of consternation and hand-wringing,
2:07.2	volunteered to be the head coach for his boys' farmball team. Kelly didn't really play a lot of
2:13.5	sports growing up, but he's still kind of a romantic when it comes to baseball. He even asked his team to call him Skipper.
	...

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