Ask Cael: How do you prepare a kid for success at the college level?

Story Published Saturday, May 15th, 2010

Question from Scott Adams: Obviously, a big part of a coach’s job is recruiting talented, confident, smart kids with a strong desire to work and to succeed.  Often, many kids who dominated throughout their high school years have a hard time adjusting to the grind of more of their matches being tough hard fought battles.  This can be a strain on a kid mentally and physically.  How do you prepare a kid for success at the college level.

Cael: Scott you are right on. There are a lot of qualities that a kid needs to have to be successful in college.  The first is to have a love of competing (not just winning) and a love of the process of training hard and being committed.  The majority of that comes from home but a coach can motivate and lead the kids in the right direction.  You do that by focusing on effort instead of the winning and losing.  Teach them to expect obstacles and setbacks and to work right through them.  Obstacles don’t clear themselves out of the way.  They are part of what makes winning so exciting. Because you have to overcome.  Obstacles are just tests to see how badly you want to reach you goals.  So how do you teach the determination, focus, and character needed to be the absolute best you can be?  I don’t know…I would guess just start small.  Teach the fighting spirit and set the standard of what you expect and hold kids accountable in practice.  Challenge them and help them through to success.  Find tough competition and win or lose help your kid to have the right attitude.

It’s important to challenge them with the best competition you can find.  Also challenge them with the best workout partners you can find.  Be creative and/or aggressive to find workout partners that can test your kids as often as possible.      Steel sharpens steel.  Take them to tournaments that they will be tested. Part of preparing for adversity is facing adversity.

Wrestle in the off-season.  I like to see kids who train and compete in the summer because that’s what we do in college.  When I see a kid who doesn’t compete in the offseason I wonder why they don’t.  Is it because they don’t love the sport enough? Or they don’t want to work hard in the summer? or is it just because they are playing another sport?  There are a lot of potential questions and answers there.  As a college coach I would expect to see a high school kid wrestling in the summer simply because they want to be the best.  They want to take every advantage to make progress and they simply just love wrestling too much to do only during the regular high school season.

Make sure your kids are doing their best in school.  To be a great college wrestler, you have to be a good student.  That attitude is developed long before they get to college.  If grades are always an issue, it will certaintly affect their wrestling performance.  The best thing wrestling can do is get a kid a degree.  Academics must be a priority.

One issue kids have when they get to college is they think they need to party and party hard frequently.  If you as his father or high school coach can set the example that drinking is not a cool thing to do, it will have an impact on your wrestler.  Kids almost think they are expected from their peers to drink and party hard in college.  If they aren’t taught differently at home or even from coaches they are vulnerable.  Bottomline, they are going to follow someone, so make sure it is you. Alcohol and partying is more devastating to the college careers of student-athletes than anything. Part of a total commitment is not drinking alcohol.

Those are a few ideas.  I hope that helps.  Good luck.

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