Social distancing and the reimagining of athletics.

(this entry was first published in March, 2020)

What is an athletic department without athletes? How do coaches coach a socially distant team? How do teams keep their team community alive when they can’t physically be together? How do you recruit players that you can’t see to a program that no longer has a shape? Etc. Etc. Etc.

I have been thinking about these questions a great deal over the past two weeks. As the reality of social distancing descends upon us, my thoughts turn to athletics and all of the collegiate coaches whom I know. Like many others, coaches and athletics administrators are faced with the incredible challenge of re-imagining, and in some cases re-inventing that paradigm of collegiate athletics…all athletics for that matter.

Thinking as both a coach and an Organizational Psychologist, I have identified three areas that need immediate solutions in order to maintain the paradigmatic structures of what we define as athletics: Remote Teaming, Remote Recruiting, and Addressing the Mental Health Needs of Student-Athletes (and Coaches/Administrators)

Remote Teaming

I use “Teaming” to describe all functions and processes related to creating, building, and perpetuating a co-created team identity. I have previously written about a team being an idea, and along those lines, Teaming is about keeping that identity operational. In the “real” (aka non-virtual) world the Teaming process is rooted in social constructionism and includes all the words, symbols, metaphors, rules, myths, etc. that create the narrative ecosystem of a given team. This ecosystem, like its biological analog, requires the same level of maintenance to ensure its survival; What water is to a forest, communication is to a Team. All roads of the Teaming process lead back to communication because it is through communication that reality is constructed. Put simply, your team needs to communicate and communicate frequently.

Remote Teaming is about creating or re-creating that same level of interaction that you would have had in-person. We no longer have locker rooms, or hallways, or dining halls, or social gatherings…so what can we do? You do what you can and you have to be incredibly intentional about it. Your team needs to be in near-constant communication, so do what you can to facilitate that.

Remote Recruiting

Remote Recruiting, like Remote Teaming, is predicated by communication with an added layer of evaluation. if you cannot see a player perform, then new metrics need to be developed to evaluate cultural synergy and team fit. In other words, this time of social distancing is asking all coaches to think about recruiting as a process of evaluating the internal, not just the external. How do you do that? You develop different questions—questions that illuminate a recruit’s mindset because it is that mindset that drives all actions and behaviors. I have written about dialogic processes in a previous article and I would urge all coaches who wish to develop these deeper questions to begin looking into ways to engineer deeper levels of dialogue.

Mental Health

Mental health is perhaps the most obvious, and simultaneously the hardest, area to address. Student-athletes, coaches, and administrators are now socially isolated and removed from the support structures that ameliorate times of social-emotional upheaval. “Normal” is gone, the team is gone, school is gone, etc. You all need help. Student-athletes are not the only ones struggling under the heaviness of this change; coaches and administrators are also victims of the same forces of isolation. I say it again, you all need help. If you haven’t already put a mental health support plan into place, I urge you to do so. If you need more information about the nuances of mental health, then reach out and I will put you in touch with psychologists that can help.

Now is the time for leadership and action. Now is the time for re-imagining and engineering the deep levels of communication needed to spur creative thinking and problem solving. Communication is key across the board. Start there and let dialogue guide your actions.

How can I help? Let me know.