There is a tendency in youth sports to measure a coach by the scoreboard.

Did the team win?
Did they make the championship game?
How many tournaments did they win?
Is my son or daughter getting enough playing time?
Is the team ranked?

Those things are easy to see. They are easy to measure. And they are easy to talk about.

But they don’t necessarily tell you whether your athlete has a good coach.

Especially in youth lacrosse, the most important work a coach does often doesn’t show up on a scoreboard. Development takes time. Character takes time. Confidence takes time. Learning how to respond to adversity takes time.

The coach who matters most may not be the one who produces the most wins at age 11 or 12.

It may be the one who helps produce the person and player your child becomes at 16, 17, 18 and beyond.

At VB Select Lacrosse, I believe coaching is about much more than teaching a player how to catch, throw, dodge, shoot, or defend. Those things matter. But the deeper responsibility is helping young athletes become capable, confident, accountable people who understand how to work, compete, respond to failure, and continually improve.

So, if you’re evaluating your child’s coach, here are seven things I’d look for.

A Good Coach Sees What Your Athlete Could Become

A good development coach isn’t only looking at who your athlete is today.

They see the potential.

They understand that the player standing in front of them at 11 or 12 years old is still very much a work in progress.

The fastest player today may not be the fastest player at 16.

The strongest player today may not remain the strongest.

The player scoring the most goals this weekend may not ultimately become the best lacrosse player.

And the quiet kid who doesn’t get much attention today may develop into an exceptional athlete with the right instruction, confidence and opportunity.

That’s why good coaching requires patience and vision.

A coach shouldn’t simply be asking, “How can this player help us win this weekend?”

They should also be asking:

“What can this athlete become three, four or five years from now if we develop them correctly?”

Those are two very different questions.

Short-term success can sometimes come from specializing a young athlete, exploiting one physical advantage or simply putting the best players on the field and allowing them to dominate.

Development requires something different.

It requires teaching.

It requires repetition.

It requires patience.

And sometimes it requires allowing an athlete to struggle.

A good coach isn’t simply building a player who can help the team win today.

They’re developing the athlete that player can become tomorrow.

A Good Coach Lets Your Athlete Make Mistakes

This one is difficult for parents.

We want our kids to succeed. We want them to look good. We want them to make the right play.

But athletes don’t develop by avoiding mistakes.

They develop by making mistakes, learning from them and trying again.

Your athlete tries something difficult and gets it wrong?

Correct it.

Teach them.

Explain what they could have done differently.

Then let them try again.

If every mistake results in yelling, embarrassment or an immediate trip to the sideline, something else starts happening.

The athlete stops experimenting.

They stop taking chances.

They stop trying difficult things.

Eventually, they begin playing not to make mistakes instead of playing to get better.

That’s a dangerous place for a young athlete.

Lacrosse is a creative game. Players have to make decisions under pressure. They have to see opportunities before they happen. They have to try things that don’t always work.

You cannot develop an athlete who is afraid to fail.

A good coach creates an environment where mistakes have consequences, but where mistakes are also understood as part of the learning process.

Correction without humiliation.

That’s development.

A Good Coach Holds Your Athlete to a High Standard

A good coach isn’t always going to be nice.

And that’s okay.

Sometimes a coach needs to correct your athlete.

Sometimes they need to raise their voice.

Sometimes they need to demand more.

Sometimes they need to tell an athlete exactly what they don’t want to hear.

I’m completely fine with that.

In fact, I believe young athletes need adults who are willing to tell them the truth.

But there is a very important distinction between demanding excellence and tearing an athlete down.

Hard coaching should make an athlete better.

It should make them more accountable.

More disciplined.

More resilient.

More prepared.

It should not make them question whether they are worthy of being there.

A coach can be demanding without being degrading.

A coach can hold a player accountable without humiliating them.

A coach can expect more because they genuinely believe the athlete is capable of more.

That’s the kind of hard coaching I believe in.

Demanding? Absolutely.

Degrading? No.

The standard should be high because the belief in the athlete is high.

A Good Coach Cares More About Development Than Temporary Wins

Of course coaches want to win.

I do.

Competition matters. Winning matters. Learning how to compete matters.

But youth coaching requires a longer view.

A good coach understands that development doesn’t always show up in the final score.

Maybe your athlete made a better decision today.

Maybe they finally used the technique they’ve been practicing for months.

Maybe they recognized a slide before it arrived.

Maybe they played better off-ball defense.

Maybe they communicated with a teammate.

Maybe they made a mistake they’ve made twenty times before—and this time they recognized it and corrected it.

Those are wins, too.

Sometimes the team loses and your athlete takes a huge step forward.

Sometimes the team wins and your athlete learns very little.

That’s why the scoreboard can be a terrible measure of development.

Winning today and developing for tomorrow aren’t always the same thing.

The goal should be to build athletes who can eventually win because they have been properly developed, not athletes who win early because a coach has figured out how to maximize a young team’s current physical advantages.

Development compounds.

The work we do today should prepare the athlete for what comes next.

A Good Coach Tells Your Athlete What They Need to Hear

A good coach isn’t there to constantly tell your athlete how great they are.

Sometimes encouragement is appropriate.

Sometimes praise is deserved.

But athletes also need honest feedback.

Sometimes they need to hear:

• Your effort isn’t good enough.
• You’re doing this wrong. Here’s how you fix it.
• You need to go harder.
• You need to play with more intensity.
• Your attitude needs to change.
• You’re capable of much more.
• You need to become a better teammate.
• You aren’t prepared enough yet.

None of those messages are inherently negative.

They can actually be incredibly positive when delivered with the right intent.

Honest feedback is part of development.

A coach who genuinely believes in an athlete doesn’t have to tell them they’re perfect.

They can tell them the truth because they believe the athlete is capable of responding to it.

That’s an important lesson that extends far beyond lacrosse.

Eventually, your child will have a teacher, professor, employer, military leader, supervisor or teammate who tells them something they don’t want to hear.

Learning how to receive constructive criticism while maintaining confidence is a life skill.

Good coaching helps teach it.

A Good Coach Knows When to Push Your Athlete

Good coaches learn their athletes.

They learn their personalities.

They learn their strengths.

They learn their limitations.

They learn the difference between being exhausted and simply giving less than they have.

And they learn when an athlete needs encouragement versus when they need to be challenged.

Sometimes the right coaching decision is to give an athlete a break.

Sometimes it’s to demand another rep.

Sometimes it’s to ask for more intensity.

Sometimes it’s to say, “That’s not good enough. You have more in you.”

Athletes don’t reach their potential by always staying comfortable.

Growth happens at the edge of what they can currently do.

That’s where coaching matters.

A good coach shouldn’t constantly push an athlete beyond reasonable limits. But they also shouldn’t allow an athlete to become comfortable doing the minimum.

There is a difference between protecting an athlete from failure and preparing an athlete to handle difficulty.

I believe the second one is the coach’s responsibility.

Sometimes your athlete needs someone to believe in them.

Sometimes they need someone to challenge them.

A good coach learns which one they need.

A Good Coach Is Fair

Fair doesn’t necessarily mean equal.

It doesn’t mean every athlete receives identical playing time.

It doesn’t mean every athlete gets the same role.

And it doesn’t mean every athlete is coached in exactly the same way.

Fairness means the standards are consistent.

The expectations shouldn’t change because of who the player is.

Mistakes shouldn’t be acceptable for one athlete and punished in another.

Work ethic shouldn’t matter for one player but not another.

Attitude shouldn’t be overlooked because someone happens to be the team’s best scorer.

Good coaches don’t play favorites.

They coach athletes according to what they need to become better.

That might mean more individual attention for one player.

It might mean greater accountability for another.

It might mean asking more from the most talented athlete because they are capable of more.

Fair coaching isn’t treating everyone the same.

It’s giving everyone an honest opportunity to develop while holding everyone accountable to a meaningful standard.

The Scoreboard Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story

Years from now, your athlete probably won’t remember every score.

They probably won’t remember every tournament record.

They may not remember who won every game when they were 11 or 12.

But they will remember the coaches who believed in them.

They’ll remember the coach who saw something in them before they saw it themselves.

They’ll remember the coach who let them fail and taught them how to respond.

They’ll remember the coach who demanded more because they knew they were capable of more.

They’ll remember the coach who told them the truth.

They’ll remember the coach who pushed them when they wanted to quit.

And they’ll remember the coach who treated them fairly.

That’s the responsibility I believe we have as coaches.

At VB Select Lacrosse, our goal isn’t simply to produce better lacrosse players.

It’s to build better people through lacrosse.

The stick skills matter.

The athletic development matters.

The competition matters.

Winning matters.

But those things are part of a much larger process.

We’re trying to help young athletes become disciplined, confident, accountable, resilient people who understand that improvement doesn’t happen overnight and that potential isn’t something you’re given.

It’s something you develop.

So when you’re evaluating your child’s coach, don’t only ask how many games they’ve won.

Ask a different set of questions:

Does my child’s coach see their potential?

Does my child feel safe enough to make mistakes and learn?

Are they being held to a meaningful standard?

Are they actually developing?

Are they receiving honest feedback?

Are they being challenged to become better?

Are they being treated fairly?

Those answers tell you far more about the quality of a coach than a win-loss record ever will.

Because the ultimate measure of a coach isn’t always what the scoreboard says about the team.

It’s what the athlete becomes because that coach was there.