The player/coach relationship has changed dramatically over the years. With existing societal problems, players enter athletic programs with new attitudes that did not exist previously. These feelings have challenged coaches to create inventive ideas on how to reach players and form lasting relationships.

When analyzing how these relationships form between the player and coach, many different methods can be used to create stable connections. Over the years, I have identified four areas coaches can apply to help improve relationships with players. In my experience, these methods have been instrumental in helping players accept feedback, value team concepts, and form lasting relationships with teammates and coaches.

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I was all of 16, popcorn in hand, watching the most peculiar film. Confused and curious I saw apes and airborne bones, spaceships, stars and perfect monolithic structures that foretold the essence of an all-knowing being. I watched in wonder at a renegade talking computer that seals the fate of astronauts pursuing the message of a distant alien beacon. And then to top it all off an incredible light show intended to show the passage of one’s soul through another dimension right before my very eyes in 1968. I like many people, left the theater scratching my head and wondering what exactly did I just see?

Space Odyssey 2001 was probably the only film I went back to the theater to see six times. Of course being at that youthful age, some of the impetus was to see that incredible light show in a cannabis- induced altered state of mind. John Dykstra’s montage of colorful landscapes in high-speed superimposed in various colorful grids is quite dated in 2008, but back then there were no computerized graphics, no teams of visual design wizards, just plain old ordinary inventiveness.

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