Native American football coaches’ experience of a motivational climate collaboration with sport psychology researchers

Motivational climate

Building on Nicholls ¹ conception of AGPT and Ames ⁷ notion of a motivational climate, Seifriz et al. ⁸ proposed that athletes could perceive the climate on their sport team as being task-involving or ego-involving based on the type of goals that were emphasized by coaches. In a task-involving climate, athletes perceive that the emphasis within the team is on each athlete’s personal effort and improvement, cooperation among athletes, all members feel they have an important role on the team, and mistakes in practice or competition are viewed as part of the learning process. ⁸ By contrast, in an ego-involving climate, athletes perceive that the coach values the most talented and top-performing athletes, fosters intra-team rivalry, and punishes mistakes. ⁸ Conceptually, the promotion of a task-involving climate focuses athletes on aspects of participation that are within their control, such as their effort and improvement, an ego involving climate creates expectations that are not necessarily within the athletes control, such as their normative standing. Nicholls ¹ maintained that the promotion of a task-involving conditions and de-emphasis on ego-involving characteristics was key to facilitating positive motivational responses for individuals engaged in achievement striving situations such as school and sport.

Another component of the climate that has received attention in the sport psychology literature over the past decade is the caring climate. Newton and colleagues, ² defined a caring climate as “the extent to which individuals consistently perceive a particular setting to be interpersonally inviting, safe, supportive, and able to provide the experience of being valued and respected.” ² Newton and colleagues ² have also developed the Caring Climate Scale (CCS) to assess perceptions of caring within sport and physical activity settings. The CCS is administered on a Likert scale and sample items include, “On this team, the coach respects the players” and “On this team, the coaches listen to athletes.” ² Correlational research has indicated that perceptions of a caring climate are strongly associated with perceptions of task-involving climate.^2,9 Newton and colleagues ² argue that a caring and task-involving climate are distinct, but complimentary, and together can set athletes up to maximize their sport experience.

The theoretical tenets of both a caring and task-involving climate has gained broad appeal in the sport psychology literature. Athletes perceiving a task-involving climate have reported increased sport commitment and persistence, and lower intentions of dropping out relative to athletes who perceive a more ego-involving climate.^4,5 In a similar vein, athletes in a caring climate have reported greater commitment to sport and stronger intentions for future participation.^2,9 By contrast, perceptions of an ego-involving climate have been linked to less adaptive motivational responses, such as less commitment to sport and stronger intentions of dropping out relative to a task-involving climate.^4,5 In sum, athletes’ perceptions of the motivational climate have been associated with their sport commitment, persistence, and retention, which are significant to this study, given the coaching staff’s desire to retain more of their student-athletes.

Although existing research has established positive relationships between perceptions of a caring and tasking involving climate and desirable motivational responses, only a limited number of studies examined whether a motivational climate intervention for coaches would translate into positive results for athletes in natural sport settings. Smith et al. ⁶ conducted a large-scale experimental motivational climate intervention for youth basketball players ages 10 to 14. They trained coaches in a sport league to foster a task-involving climate and compared their findings with a similar sport league where the coaches had received no training. The trained coaches participated in a 75-min workshop that provided them a background for understanding how to help athletes define success based on their effort, improvement, and cooperation with peers. In line with AGPT, the trained coaches were encouraged to provide positive reinforcement and technical instruction, and avoid negative and punishing behaviors. Athletes in this study that played basketball for trained coaches reported perceiving a more task-involving climate, lower performance worry, somatic anxiety, and concentration disruption over the course of the season than did their control counterparts. This study highlighted how brief educational sessions for coaches resulted in positive outcomes for athletes. However, the experimental approach of comparing the responses of athletes’ pre/post intervention did not provide insight into how receptive the coaches were to the motivational climate based training or how they integrated the recommended coaching principles into their practice.

The most noteworthy motivational climate intervention in sport currently underway is the PAPA Project (i.e. Promoting Adolescent Physical Activity). This large-scale intervention directed by Duda ¹⁰ includes the coordinated efforts of sport psychology researchers across five countries: England, France, Greece, Norway, and Spain. Similar to the approach taken by Smith et al., ⁶ the PAPA Project is examining the effects of training soccer coaches to create an empowering motivational climate for youth athletes by comparing pre/post intervention results between an experimental and control group of athletes. PAPA has the potential to make a substantial contribution to the field, but current PAPA descriptions suggest that the project was not designed to explore how the coaches integrated motivational climate research into their practice. ¹⁰

To date, motivational climate interventions in sport highlight the experiences among athletes, but little is known regarding the coaches’ experiences of the interventions. Moreover, the process by which coaches come to obtain the skills and knowledge to foster such a climate are limited. Existing motivational climate interventions have also been limited to youth athletes, even though research has documented that a caring and task-involving climate may optimize the experiences of athletes of all ages and competition levels. ¹¹ In addition, research employing a qualitative approach is needed to examine the processes involved in coaches utilizing strategies to create a caring and task-involving climate. To the authors’ knowledge, no published studies have qualitatively examined coaches’ experiences of developing the motivational climate.

Finally, sport programs are inherently multicultural connecting athletes, coaches, spectators, and sport psychology professionals from an array of cultural backgrounds. Sport psychology research should reflect this diversity, yet some racial and ethnic groups are rarely included in the literature, most notably, Native Americans.^12,13 Further, sport participation is a culturally situated phenomenon, with diverse cultural groups assigning different meanings and purposes for sport engagement. ¹⁴ For example, Duda ¹⁴ found that Dine (Navajo) male and female athletes differed considerably from white male athletes in their adoption of achievement goals, which included their purpose for sport participation and how they processed success and failure in achievement contexts. While the exertion of high effort was the central outcome goal reported by Dine athletes, winning was the primary objective emphasized by white male athletes. ¹⁴ Drawing from the limitations of the climate literature, the purpose of the current study was to explore a Native American college football coaching staff’s experiences of collaborating with sport psychology researchers to create a more caring and task-involving climate on their football team, adding their important, but often marginalized voices to the literature. This study describes the collaborative project and qualitatively focuses on three coaches who displayed less caring and more ego-involving coaching philosophies at the beginning of the study.

Setting

Haskell Indian Nations University ^b (HINU) is home to the only all-Native American college football team in the United States. At the beginning of the season, the football team consisted of three seniors, zero juniors, 24 sophomores, and 68 incoming freshman. Out of a group of 44 entering freshman from 4 years prior, only 6.8% returned for their senior year while no athletes from an incoming freshmen class of 55 from 3 years prior returned for their junior season. Because of the high turnover of student-athletes, 72% of the team consisted of incoming freshman at the start of the collaboration. The football program’s roster by class highlights its difficulties in retaining and graduating student-athletes. Nevertheless, factors threatening the persistence of Native American students are not isolated to the Haskell football program, but is a systemic challenge affecting the state of Native American education nationwide. ¹⁶ According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, ¹⁷ Haskell’s graduation rates by gender reveal that only 4% of male students, who entered Haskell as true freshmen, were on track to graduate with a bachelor’s degree within 6 years. While more Native Americans are enrolling in college than ever before, the Department of Education reported in 2005, that Native American students still remain the least likely of all races and ethnicities to graduate from college. ¹⁶

Participants

The collaborative project included eight Native American coaches who were all former football players and graduates of Haskell and two sport psychology researchers. In line with the emergent nature of qualitative research, as the study progressed, we purposefully focused in on three coaches because they provided a more interesting case than the other coaches.^18,19 We also include the additional perspective of the coach who originally contacted the researchers. The “contacting coach” offered a valuable viewpoint, as he was familiar with these coaches prior to the study and was able to observe the changes these three coaches made over the course of the collaboration.

Although the study was originally designed to include all eight coaches, observations conducted by the researchers during the four sessions with the staff prior to the season led the researchers to deem that three of the eight coaches were more to resistant to the evidence-based coaching practices recommended by researchers. These three coaches each argued at various time points during the sessions that the caring and task-involving approach was not feasible in football or in line with their prior coaching philosophy.

Much of the emphasis in this line of research has been on delivering motivational climate literature to coaches in cost effective ways with the supposition that the simple transferring of information to coaches will translate into positive outcomes for athletes. ⁶ However, it seemed critical to the researchers in this study to explore why these three coaches were more resistant to the caring and task-involving approach than the other five coaches. Questions around how coaches interpret and respond to motivational climate theory has not been examined, even though the potential value of this research hinges on the coaches’ receptivity and willingness to integrate the tenets of motivational climate research into their practice. To protect the anonymity of the coaches, limited descriptive information can be shared about their background. The three coaches who are highlighted in this study are given the pseudonyms Dan, Jay, and Tom and the contacting coach is given the pseudonym “contacting coach.”

Researcher’s position

The first author of this article is a former football player, a graduate of Haskell, and accepted a position on the coaching staff prior to the start of the collaboration. In many ways, the first author’s relationship with the Haskell football program and background as a Native American gave him an insider status with the participants. Obtaining access to this site would have been more difficult for an outsider given the overall distrust of academia in Indian Country. This lack of trust is rooted in a history of research that has exploited Indigenous communities and Native Americans have not forgotten. ²⁰ As such, gaining entry to the site and building trust with the participants happened more quickly and seamlessly than would have been the case if the first author were a non-Native American. The first author’s familiarity with the program also heightened the potential for reactivity (i.e. researcher’s influence on the setting) and bias in the gathering and analysis of data. According to Merriam, ¹⁸ instead of trying to eliminate reactivity and bias, it is important to identify and monitor how they may shape the data collection and analysis process. In particular, the following strategies were used to monitor the researcher’s reactivity: reflexive conversations with peers about how the researcher’s existing relationship with the site influenced the coaches’ responses as well as his interpretations of the data, striving to understand the coaches’ point of views through open-ended questioning, member checks, frequent debriefing sessions with the second author, prolonged engagement with participants, and by using observations and interviews to collect data. ¹⁸ Ultimately, the existing relationship effected the first author’s perceptions and interpretations as well as the coaches’ responses and should be kept in mind while reading this study. However, established trust between researcher and coaches also enhanced the quality, depth, and trustworthiness of the data.

Procedures

The contacting coach reached out to the lead author looking for strategies to improve retention rates within the Haskell football program. A motivational climate collaboration was proposed by the researchers and the coaching staff indicated that they wanted to participate. Institutional review board permission was granted from both Haskell and the researchers’ home institution. The motivation climate collaboration and analysis occurred in four stages: (a) an initial 2-h interactive session was held for the coaching staff where motivational climate literature was shared and strategies to foster a caring and task-involving climate were discussed; (b) three follow-up dialogical sessions occurred over the next 3 days where the coaching staff engaged in critical conversations about the implications of becoming caring and task-involving coaches; (c) the sessions culminated in the coaches creating a Coaches’ Pact; and (d) at the end of the season, interviews were conducted with the three coaches that formerly displayed less caring and more ego-involving coaching styles.

Initial session

The initial session included an interactive presentation of relevant motivational climate research (1, 2, 3, 4), examples of famous athlete quotes with a strong task or ego-orientation, contrasting video clips of task and ego-involved coaching, and strategies for creating a caring and task-involving climate. Following the presentation, the coaches were asked to generate ideas about how to create a more caring and task-involving climate for their athletes. For more details on the initial session, see Table 1. Observations were conducted in a field note journal during the initial session and subsequent follow-up sessions were carried out by the first author. ¹⁵ These observations were later transcribed and the data were integrated with the interview transcripts for analysis. ¹⁵

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Table 1.

Initial session overview.

Time	Activity	Description	Purpose
5 min	Welcome and introductions	Researchers and coaches each introduced themselves	Establish rapport
5 min	Complete goal orientation measure	Coaches completed and scored the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ 21 )	Coaches assess their definitions of success in football
10 min	Ice breaker activity	In pairs, coaches were presented with a series of prompts (e.g. “be the best” or “do your best”) and asked to choose the prompt that aligned most closely with their coaching philosophy. Group discussion ensued based on responses	Stimulate reflection among coaches and give researchers insight into the diversity of coaches’ views
50 min	Interactive PowerPoint presentation of AGPT and Caring research	• Defined task and ego orientation • Provided quotes from famous athletes that reflected task and ego • Shared contrasting video clips of coaches who represented strong task- or ego-oriented approaches • Provided a summary of research supporting the benefits of exhibiting a task orientation • Presented an overview of the features of a caring, task-, and ego-involving climate • Offered strategies to foster a caring and task-involving climate (e.g. create a team pact; team building activities; mistake rituals for athletes; positive mistake responses for coaches, greeting athletes)	Provide coaches with an overview of AGPT and caring research
50 min	Discussion	Coaches generated ideas on how to create a more caring and task-involving climate for their athletes (e.g. team meals at coaches’ homes, fishing trips, showing appreciation for players as more than athletes)	Coaches practiced applying AGPT and caring research to their team

Follow-up sessions

Following the initial session, the first author and coaching staff met as a group over three consecutive days to engage in critical conversations about the practicality of becoming caring and task-involving coaches. The dialogical sessions lasted approximately 3 h each and each characteristic of a caring and task-involving climate was deliberated. The dialogue generated between coaches and researchers provided an opportunity for the coaches to be reflective about how their coaching style affected their athletes. These conversations often included reflections on the coaches’ own athletic experiences and how their former coaches treated them and made them feel.

Formation of the Coaches’ Pact

By the end of the three sessions, the coaches reached a consensus about how they wanted to treat their athletes during the upcoming season and symbolized their commitment to creating a caring and task-involving climate on their football team by creating a Coaches’ Pact. After each coach signed the pact, it was hung on the locker room wall to provide the coaching staff with a reminder of the goal they had set to create a caring and task-involving climate on their football team. This public display also gave their athletes insight into what they could expect from their coaches. From the moment that the pact was initiated, the motivational climate collaboration centered on the staffs’ striving to honor the Coaches’ Pact (see Figure 1). OPEN IN VIEWER

Because these coaches were all former football players and graduates of Haskell, their experiences in their setting were important. During the third pre-season session, the first author made note of a conversation with the coaches where they discussed how there were often rifts among the coaching staff, athletes, and other departments on campus. Their attitude was that to create a positive climate, they needed to think and speak positively about their athletes, fellow coaches, and university. These sentiments are captured in their comments about speaking positively, building unity, and not making assumptions, but rather giving each other the benefit of the doubt. In addition, the coaches chose to include the salient characteristics of a caring and task-involved climate. Rewarding effort and improvement, encouraging cooperation (unity), treating all players and coaches as equally important, and viewing mistakes as part of learning are all hallmarks of a task-involving climate. Further, engendering respect, communicating honestly, and caring for the coaches and players are all qualities of a caring climate.

Post collaboration interviews

The fourth phase of the study was carried out after the season in interviews with the three coaches and the contacting coach. The interviews were conducted on site, lasting approximately 90 min each. The semi-structured interview protocol consisted of five questions:

The Coaches’ Pact sounds interesting can you explain it to me?

Probe: How was your style different or the same than previous seasons?

Describe your relationship with your athletes over the course of this season?

Probe: How were your relationships different or the same than previous seasons?

How, if any, did the Coaches’ Pact influence your coaching this season?

Probe: Is there anything you would change about the Coaches’ Pact moving forward?

For the coaching staff, the Coaches’ Pact became synonymous with participating in the motivational climate collaboration. As such, the phrase “Coaches’ Pact” was used instead of motivational climate collaboration in the interview guide.

Following the interview, the researchers followed up with the three coaches on three to five additional occasions, asking them to expand upon and clarify their responses from the interview. According to Culver et al., ²² follow-up conversations with the same participants improves the researcher’s opportunities for achieving comprehensiveness and depth during data collection. Offering the coaches multiple chances to elaborate on their views increased the probability that the research accurately represented the coach’s viewpoints and, as such, enhanced the trustworthiness of the data. After all the data were collected, the participants were provided with copies of their interview transcriptions to verify the accuracy of their statements and to insure their views were adequately expressed. ¹⁹

Data analysis

This study employed an integrated deductive-inductive approach to data analysis. ²³ First, the coach’s responses were deductively interpreted and categorized based on themes from relevant AGPT and caring literature. For example, a priori codes of AGPT, “ego-involving climate” was used to deductively classify the coach’s responses. Second, to fully capture the coaches’ perspectives of participating in the collaboration, the transcripts were inductively coded, which allowed new themes to emerge such as, “transformations in coaching.” The first author identified the deductive and inductive themes whereas the second author conducted a peer review ¹⁵ of the transcripts to ensure that the themes outlined by the first author were representative of coaches’ data.

Previous experiences in an ego-involving climate

Dan, Jay, and Tom provided important contextual details about what they viewed were traditional approaches to coaching football. These coaches all played football at Haskell, but it was at different times and for different coaches. Each coach grew up playing football in a different part of the United States, but despite these differences, a pattern emerged from their narratives that portray a football coaching culture that is masculine, authoritarian, and ego-involving. Jay describes his coaches’ behaviors when he was an athlete:

It was typical and it was common for the coaches to yell at you, to scream at you if you did something wrong. So you never wanted to do nothing wrong. You always wanted to stay on your path; you always wanted to do everything right for them, not just because you wanted to win, but just because you didn’t want to get yelled at.

In a similar vein, Tom referred to his high school football experiences explaining that his coach would yell at him and pull him out of games for making mistakes. In turn, Tom described that it was common for him to respond to his athletes’ mistakes by yelling at them and pulling them out of the lineup. Tom’s rationale for continuing to coach his athletes in the same manner that he was coached was “It makes sense that how you are treated is going to be how you treat someone else.”

Although there are a number of significant others who influence whether an athlete is task or ego-involved in sport, coaches have been singled out as one of the most influential. ¹¹ These coaches’ comments illustrate the prominent role their coaches played in the development of their own ego-involving coaching philosophy. These findings are in line with Cushion et al.’s ²⁴ notion that athletes participate in an informal coaching apprenticeship as athletes, directly observing and familiarizing themselves to the task of coaching. Although previous research has linked perceptions of an ego-involving climate with maladaptive motivational responses in athletes, ²⁵ these coaches’ reflections provide a rich and insightful account of some of the enduring consequences associated with their participation in an ego-involving climate.

Tension in moving from theory to practice

The coaches’ prior athletic involvement in an ego-involving climate appeared to have shaped their coaching worldview, in so much that they had not considered that there was any other way to coach football. When Dan was initially exposed to the motivational climate literature, he told the “contacting coach” that he was having trouble with the positive approach. In our interview, Dan explained why:

A lot of the stuff we are talking about now, about not chewing out a kid, about always using positive reinforcement, that’s new for me, that’s a totally new technique. That’s a totally new area that I have never seen, that I have never practiced, that I have never been exposed to.

Tom claimed that motivating his athletes had always been a top priority, but he explained that coaching from the pact was different from what he was used to.

The goals were to get the kids to buy into the coaching staff and it is a different way of doing it. You have to be more patient. The traditional method of a football team is to punish mistakes and demand the respect, but I think this caring climate stuff, this was a different way of getting there. It’s maybe a more feminine way, maybe some people might say, than a masculine way.

The most contested aspect of the collaborative project concerned how the coaches would respond to their athletes’ mistakes. A characteristic of a task-involving climate is for coaches to view mistakes as part of the athlete’s learning process. However, initially half of the coaches believed that punishing mistakes was necessary, and they had difficulty understanding how the task-involving approach would be effective. During the second pre-season session, Tom contended, “We don’t want a culture where it’s just okay to make mistakes.” Jay followed up on Tom’s comments by stating, “So we’re not going to yell at the players? My coaches yelled at me and I am okay. I think it motivated me to do better.” A turning point in the conversation about how to respond to mistakes occurred when the newest coach on the staff made a comment about how he wanted the coaches to treat his mistakes. He said, “If I do something wrong, I want you to yell at me, I need it.” The contacting coach responded to the young coach’s comments by stating, “You’ve grown so much over the last couple of months as a coach and I didn’t yell at you once. If you were able to learn and improve without me jumping all over you, then you don’t need to be yelled at.” After this exchange, the first author asked the coaches to think about why athletes make mistakes and if punishing mistakes was helping their athletes achieve the goals they had set for them. Tom, who commented, “We don’t want a culture where it’s just ok to make mistakes,” shifted in his position by reflecting on his own athletic experiences stating, “In high school when I made mistakes the coach pulled me out of the game and I didn’t learn from it; all it did was make me afraid of making a mistake again.”

Tom seemed to recognize that a negative focus on his athletes’ mistakes was not enhancing their motivation or helping them learn like he had hoped. While Dan, Jay, and Tom originally considered punitive responses to mistakes as a normal feature of coaching football, reflection and discourse on the topic helped these coaches contemplate a more caring and task-involving approach.

In asking coaches to be reflective about their practices, it was important for the researchers to be reflective as well. During the initial session, the first author made note of one of Tom’s arguments, which stimulated the researchers to think more critically about the appropriateness and relevance of the motivational climate curriculum. For example, after the staff was introduced to quotes from famous task-involving coach’s, Tom contended, “I think it would be easy to be a task-involved coach if you were winning already, but I don’t think if you have been losing like we have, you can coach that way.” From an AGPT perspective, it would have been easy to view Tom’s statement as an indication of his ego-orientation and preference for an ego-involving motivational style. By this point in the session, Tom had already expressed a number of comments that suggested he tended to approach football with an ego-orientation. However, the researchers observed that the famous coach’s quote in this situation lacked relevance for this particular coaching staff. These coaches all played and worked for a football program with far fewer resources and younger athletes than the renowned coach who was exemplified for his task-involving approach. In this instance, Tom’s views were acknowledged and responded to with respect. This exchange helped the researchers contemplate approaches to learning that were more reflective of the staff’s actual coaching experiences.

This section highlights that coaching education is more complex than transferring knowledge from coach educators to coach learners. Instead, the coaches conveyed perspectives that needed to be identified, processed, and discussed within a collaborative learning community. In describing the difficult nature of these learning experiences, the contacting coach expressed, “We [coaches] were exhausted because we hadn’t built up the stamina to engage in conversations about how our coaching was affecting the athletes … so having these talks was hard.”

Connecting theory to practice

While questioning the motivational climate theory was important for stimulating reflection and dialogue, there were also situations when the coaches made important connections during the collaboration. For instance, in an observation of the third session, the first researcher noted that there was unanimous approval among the coaching staff for rewarding their athlete’s personal effort and improvement, a key attribute of a task-involving climate. Dan expressed, “Under this type of system every kid can achieve success regardless of their age, size, or talent level.” Dan’s comments correspond to Nicholls’ ¹ notion that fostering task-involving conditions provides an equality of motivation for everyone, regardless of differences in ability. Nicholls ¹ contended that ability could never be equal, but motivation could be. In this example, there was consensus among the coaches and strategies to apply the task-involving feature of the climate to football situations were discussed. Using effort and improvement as an example, Dan suggested that each coach call his position up before the start of practice and emphasize the importance of giving maximum effort and improving in that day’s practice.

Dan, Jay, and Tom each expressed that developing the pact was a key component for helping them connect theory/research to practice. Jay described that the pact was “the way us coaches came together, we basically put it on paper how we were going to be as men, coaches, and mentors.” Dan explained that the Coaches’ Pact helped the staff “come from the same basis. We are all speaking the same language about treating kids good and treating each other good.” Tom concluded,

The Coaches’ Pact was designed to create a climate of learning, climate of caring for our players and could be something we can look back on and work toward. It kind of gave us a goal as coaches to create that climate. I think if you were just to say, alright, we’re going to create a caring climate and you had no basis on it, no kind of like … no values on how to do it, it would be tough. So I think that’s the thing the Coaches’ Pact was designed for, kind of to remind us every day that this is what we need to do if our goal is to create a caring, loving climate for these guys.

Transformations in coaching philosophies

The last theme to emerge was the coaches’ perceptions that the motivational climate collaboration had reshaped their coaching philosophies and practices. Interestingly, Dan, Jay, and Tom offered unique examples of how their coaching approaches were transformed.

Tom described how he viewed mistakes before initiating the pact,

I probably saw mistakes as the kid was trying to do his own thing and he was … he was being disrespectful to the coaching that was being taught and that sometimes maybe it wasn’t a mistake, that he purposefully chose to do it his own way.

Jay stated that the caring aspects of the Coaches’ Pact helped make him a more perceptive, and responsive coach.

I recall screaming at a kid one time because I felt like he wasn’t giving me his best effort, he was kind of, kind of giving me a little bit of attitude as well and I came back with a little bit of aggression in my voice, maybe my body language and I totally changed from that spring and summer to this school year to the football season to someone who is actually seeing the same person, same kid, maybe have the same kind of action like he was kind of down, he wasn’t giving his full, his best effort and instead of yelling at him, I asked him what was going on. I asked, “You alright, you know?” “You ok?” and no he wasn’t, he wasn’t doing ok, he was sick and he lost a relative you know. It made me think back … well maybe if I would have done that this summer, I could have pinpointed if something was wrong with him and I could have done a better job. I feel like I have become more of a nurturing mentor other than just someone who will just yell at you, and I feel good about that.

In the following passage, Dan described how his coaching style changed because of his participation in the collaboration project.

I think that a lot of the coaching style that I have used before was always kind of, your coaches are above your players and so you kind of treat players as … it kind of dehumanizes them and kind of makes them all about what they can do physically, what they can do to contribute to the team. Whereas what we are doing now, we truly get to know a kid. Talking to kids on an everyday basis, going up and shaking their hand or giving them a hug every day, asking them how they are doing in school, bringing them over to my house for meals. It has opened up those lines of communication. They feel so much more comfortable with coming to me about things. Being school, being personal, being spiritual, being whatever it is, you know.

Whereas power and control were once central to Dan’s coaching philosophy, the motivational climate collaboration appeared to give Dan permission to enact a more caring approach with his athletes. Dan described that his caring attitude reshaped his relationships with athletes, stating,

It has made all the difference for me. I have such a better relationship with my players. I feel like they are more bought into the system. I feel like it’s easier for me to talk to them on a football level, but also on a personal level about life, about their classes, about, you know, societal things, whatever it might be. Whatever might be bothering them, you know, they are so much more open to coming to me. Whereas years in the past, being more of an old school kind of hard-ass mentality, it tended to push more kids away than anything else.

Jay claimed to have good relationships with his athletes prior to signing the Coaching Pact, but the collaboration helped him develop a more personal relationship with his athletes, a relationship that extended beyond football.

A couple players, I feel like before they thought of me as someone who they could depend on when it came to practice stuff, but after we implemented the pact into our lives, I feel like they think of me as a big brother. I let them know, they can call me if they needed anything like laundry detergent or something. They know I will do my best to get if for them or help find someone who can. It’s almost like they trust me more, you know. Before, one of my players was really short in his answers with me. Now he’s like, “What are you doing?” and I’m like, “Hey, what are you doing?” you know? Our relationships are a lot better than they were when I was coaching the other way, when I was trying to be abrupt and be negative. So, it’s helped out a lot.

Like Dan and Jay, coaching with the pact helped Tom approach challenging situations with athletes from a more trusting and understanding point of view. Tom explained,

Trust is so important, because prior to the pact, when I was having difficulty with an athlete, I assumed too many things and would ready myself for a fight. After the pact, I came ready to listen. That was when the pact was most beneficial, during hard times when a kid needed to be listened to and built up.

Overall, the coaches reported that the transformations that they had experienced as a result of participating in the collaborative project translated into positive results for their athletes. The most consistent benefit the coaches noted was their improved relationships with athletes; however, the coaches also explained that their athletes’ had high attendance rates for 6 a.m. practices throughout the season, moral was improved, engagement and commitment in the program was increased, and student-athlete retention rates were higher compared with previous seasons. The contacting coach had noted that the team began the season with 96 student-athletes and ended the season with 92, which to the best of his knowledge were the most student-athletes that the football program had ever finished a season with.