The Double-Goal Coach: Positive Coaching Tools for Honoring the Game and Developing Winners in Sports and Life (Harperresource Book)

By Jim Thompson

Book Overview

Written for both parents and coaches, The Double-Goal Coach is jam-packed with specific tactics and strategies to help motivate and inspire young athletes to reach their potential.

There is a nation-wide epidemic of poor sportsmanship at all levels of youth sports, by the parents, the coaches, and the athletes. The nightly news shows parents fighting with one another, coaches lying about the age of their players, and the young athletes imitating the showboating and trash-talking antics of the professional leagues. In response, districts have tried to come up with Pledges in which participants agree to certain good sportsmanship rules, however without a complete rethink of youth sports and a practical program for implementing sportsmanship such Pledges are just words.

Jim Thompson, Director of the Positive Coaching Alliance, provides a new foundation for youth sports. Thompson offers coaches and parents the essential tools to combine the desire to win with the more important goal of using sports to teach life lessons and build character in young athletes. The Double-Goal Coach draws from current sport psychology and proven coaching techniques to provide coaches and parents the practical tools that can be used to make youth sports a fun and enriching experience.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060505311
• ISBN13: 9780060505318
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Inspiring yet practical

Many books on the subject of improving youth sports are written to create awareness of the importance of the subject, but say little of practical value on the way of doing this. Other books treat the 'how' comprehensively but are as dry as fossilized bones. The DGC avoids these two pitfalls admirably. It does a great job of describing and explaining the problems that youth sports programs have in the US (and in many other...

Should be on every youth coach's reading list!

The premise of the book is that winning is not a bad thing. It's not necessarily the only thing however. Thompson uses real life examples from youth through professional, where focusing on the positive, correcting the negative, and focus on improving have helped teams be successful. It is our job as youth coaches to make sure we are building solid citizens, teaching them life lessons through sports, and helping them become...

Another hit by Thompson

This book covers some of the same topics as Thompson's classic, Positive Coaching. However, it has some new ideas in it, and also has some lessons learned since Positive Coaching was written. It also has a handbook-type approach - it gives you example talks, helps you plan a practice and also shows you ways to help you acquire Positive Coaching skills. I have found all of Jim Thompson's books enjoyable and enlightening...

The Double Goal Coach - Winning With Character

Discussions of character in sports hinge on two sometimes competing beliefs. One holds that sports build character, the other that sports reveal it. The case can be made that both ideas are valid. Character is regularly revealed in the way that players, coaches, parents and leaders of youth sports organizations (YSOs) conduct themselves on and off the field. The "Sports Builds Character" belief is a trickier proposition. Who...