How to Tell If Your Athlete Is Coachable

“I’m currently coaching a team of 10-year-olds. I heard one dad ask his son what the coach had to say, and then said, ‘Okay, let’s work on that.’ He’s backing us up.”

Coaches will take notice of athletes' raw talent, but that talent may only go so far. It’s how willing athletes are to take direction on how to cultivate that talent that will determine their success.

Being coachable goes a long way toward any athlete’s development. Just ask Michael Jordan, who once said that being coachable was his “best skill,” and added, “I was a sponge and aggressive to learn.”

BEING COACHABLE IS ALL ABOUT ATTITUDE
What do we mean by coachable? NCSA recruiting coach and former head college baseball coach Andy Drake offers that when he evaluated recruits at games, what he observed off the field was more important to him than game performance.

“If your body language is terrible, if your coach is talking to you and you’re not paying attention, if your teammates are not doing well and you’re throwing your hands up, if you are sitting on the bench when everyone else is up and listening to the coach, that’s what I was looking for,” he says.

In other words, being coachable is less about athletes' athletic skills and more about their attitude. It is one thing for an athlete’s abilities to level off at a certain point; it is another when an athlete’s development is thwarted by the athlete’s unwillingness to listen and learn.

Read more: What a college coach looks for at recruiting events

THE CHARCTERISTICS OF A COACHABLE ATHLETE
Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers had this to say about athletes and criticism: “Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth.”

The truth, as they say, can hurt, but that willingness to receive honest and constructive feedback is perhaps the primary characteristic of the coachable athlete.

“The coachable athlete,” Drake emphasizes, is willing to be told in what areas they will need to improve. When the coach says, ’You need to get better at this,’ they say, ‘What do I need to do?’”

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF AN UNCOACHABLE ATHLETE
You know the “uncoachable” athlete when you see (or hear) one. You’ll instantly recognize the pout, the eye roll, the excuse, the deliberate throwing of teammates and even coaches under the bus. Each communicates that as far as they are concerned, they are right, nothing is their fault and the coach doesn’t know what they are talking about.

“Whether it’s roundabout or sometimes more direct, they’re communicating, ‘I’m going to have trouble doing what you ask me to do because this is how I’ve always done it,’ ” Drake observes.  “(We tell them) ‘If you’re not willing to do the things we ask you to do, we might not just have a spot for you.’”

Read more: What your child’s body language tells college coaches

RAISING THE COACHABLE ATHLETE
Parents are their children’s biggest boosters, so if you think it’s hard for athletes to accept criticism, it can be especially rough on the parents.

“Ultimately, a parent has to be willing to trust the coach and realize that the coach has their athlete’s best interests in mind,” Drake states. “I’m currently coaching a team of 10-year-olds. I heard one dad ask his son what the coach had to say, and then said, ‘Okay, let’s work on that.’ He’s backing us up.”

Read more: How college coaches recommend parents help with recruiting

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS
Drake reports that he receives emails from student-athletes who declare that they are coachable. “They will include in their NCSA profile that they listen to their coaches,” he reports. “That’s a good thing, but that should be a given, right? My response to that is: “You can’t just tell me you’re coachable; you have to show me.”

Read more: Being coachable may require ‘zero talent,’ but what it does require is effort