Stuck Picking Captains? Here's What I Do!

Struggling to choose the right team captains? 😣 Discover real coaching strategies that build athlete leadership. Then catch our in depth training for coaches on how to create a winning edge this season → https://coachfreetraining.com
 
How you pick captains can make or break your team culture. In this video, I’m sharing exactly how I revamped my approach after 14 years of coaching —because what used to work… didn’t anymore. From setting expectations to leadership roles, I'm walking you through how to pick captains with intention and strategy—not just by default.
 
👋🏼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. I’ve seen firsthand how the right leadership can elevate (or tank) your team’s confidence, cohesion, and accountability.
 
In this episode, I talk about:
Why choosing captains earlier changed everything
The 7-question leadership nomination method
How to integrate captains into your mental training program
Why your leaders must model the mindset you expect from your team
 
🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction: Rethinking Captain Selection 
00:38 Identifying the Need for Change 
01:05 New Approach: Early Captain Selection 
01:55 Revised Selection Process 
03:55 Incorporating Mental Training
 
💬 Coaches - comment below: What’s your process for picking captains? 
 
📌 Want to take your team’s game to the next level?
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🔹 Check out our plug & play elite mental game info → https://elitecompetitor.com/plugplayemg 
 🎥 Learn more here → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3oEOJvlRHE&list=PLYeP0oZHlVGnYka7f5rZc4VMcU0GTTfI3

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

Transcript

Speaker: 1:04

If you are a coach like me who has ever felt stuck on choosing captains, then this is for you. I'm actually about to tell my team. I'm gonna go to practice here shortly and tell my team that we're doing things differently. We're changing it up because I do not like how I have chosen captains or how things have gone. And I've been coaching for 14 years, won four state titles as a coach. And even with that I'm like, things need to change a little bit. So, or like if you're a coach that is just curious on like how other coaches do it, I would love for you to comment below and let me know, like how you choose captains as him going through this process of trying to figure it out. So anyways, the reason why I'm like thinking of a change is that I've had pretty strong leaders and captains in the past and it's always just been. Natural like this upperclassmen that's coming up, like she's gonna be the leader and the captain and so was this other person because they're just like naturally that it just makes sense. But this is the first season that I've had in a really long time where that's not the case. Like I don't have upperclassmen who are natural leaders, who are like vocal leaders and it just doesn't make sense for me to just appoint Captain. So the thing that I'm changing, and I'm gonna tell my team about this, like I said, is we're gonna pick captains early. So instead of waiting, I've always just waited until the season started, and that's when we've done it. I'm gonna start right before spring training starts, so I coach volleyball. It's a fall sport. We start to train like in late spring. Honestly, if I would've thought of this sooner, I probably would've done it sooner. I. But better, better late than ever. But I want the captains to start getting comfortable with their role earlier. I like, I want them to like be a voice in the group chat and be a voice at summer workouts and like start flexing their leadership muscle early. Because like our season once it starts is like 12 to 14 weeks long and it sometimes takes them like a good part of like more than half a season for them to figure out their leadership style and all that. So they go, let's start earlier. Earlier. So I'm going to pick early. The other thing I'm gonna change is, um, I've always just done it by a vote, and I know that sounds super, like, maybe not intentional, but I've always just done a done a vote to kinda get people's voices heard and then I've, for the most part agreed with what the other players are choosing. Um, I'm gonna do it that that way this time I am going to come up with seven questions. I've already started brainstorming a little bit and I want the program, so we've got 36 girls in the program. I want the program to. Decide who best fits each of these seven questions. So I've got things like, who best represents CR volleyball, um, who communicates the most consistently and clearly who handles mistakes in adversity? Well, who do I trust? Um, who leads by example, not just by being loud. So I've got like a few of these questions that I want the program to identify, like, who is that person? So it's based on like what we value in our program. So I'm gonna change that. As well, kind of like the selection process. I also wanna know ahead of time who wants to be captain. So a lot of times we assume that everyone wants to be a captain, and that might not be true. Yes, I do need people to lead, but that's also a thing that I'm gonna be changing, um, that like, not everyone wants the title of captain, so I also just wanna get kind of a, a sense of who's interested. The other thing that I did, I did think of this early, at the end of last season on their like exit meetings. I had my, my exiting seniors put down who they thought would make a good captain for next season. So I kind of have like a little bit of an input, a little bit of an inside look on like what my seniors and I had seven of them last year, like saw from a teammate perspective. And I don't know exactly how I'm gonna use that information, but I do think it. Useful. So a little tip if you wanna do that as well. And to kind of recap, first of all, I'm picking captains earlier this year. I'm having my program kind of identify leaders based on the qualities and the values of our program. Um, I asked for input from our last, um, years' seniors that were exiting. The last thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna involve them a lot more in our mental training that we're doing this year. I think that's one of the ways that they can, I like be a really great leader because we do mental training in our program. We carve out 20 minutes one time a week. To do mental training. So we teach things like breath work, visualization, like a way to come back from mistakes. Just really simple mental training skills that we do with our team that actually like make a big difference, um, especially in pressure situations and when it matters. Um, if you do want, uh, exactly what I do and the strategies that I teach, go to coach free training.com. I've created a whole training about that. Um. If you want to know that piece of it, so coach free training.com. But I'm actually gonna include my leaders in that because part of what we do for mental training is we teach'em a small skill. Like we literally just like play the video. It's like three minutes long and then we lead a discussion afterwards and I'm gonna have my leaders be the ones that are leading the discussion. And the discussion is quick. It's like three minutes if that there's questions, um, that are like predetermined, um, uh, and you get those questions and I'm just gonna give'em to my leaders. I have my leaders be. The facilitators of it, because I want them to be the most invested in our mental training because I don't know about you, but when you have a, a leader and a captain who has the role, they got the C but they're falling apart after mistakes and they're snapping at their teammates when things aren't going well, when we're losing, like, it just ruins the whole vibe of the team. So I need my leaders to be the most mentally strong and the most confident and need them, the most bought into the mental training because that's really what makes the biggest difference is like. My whole team's energy, um, is gonna follow the leaders. And so I need them to be resilient. I need them to be strong. I need them to be able to like bounce back quickly from a mistake. So I'm gonna make sure that they are the leaders, uh, and most, the most invested in the mental training that we're doing this season. So anyways, this is, that's how I'm doing it. I'm really curious to hear what you're doing because like I said, I just wanna learn from other coaches. Like how do you, what's your captain section process? Do you make a big deal about it or are you like, nah, it's actually not a huge thing and we just pick the upperclassmen and, and that's that. Oh, by the way, I usually pick like two captains. Um, sometimes I've got three, but two, two has been pretty good. And then, um, we also do a lot of leadership training and kinda give them specific roles because that also is not inherent like how to actually. Be a leader. Leader. That's another big piece of it to be on, just picking them, but curious what you do. Comment below with that and if you wanna check out that free training where I break down, um, the mental training skills, go to coach free training.