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Up Your Coaching Game: Communication

Communication is key to coaching and teamwork. You communicate with other coaches, staff, athletes and their parents every day in your facility. But how do you converse with them? A big part of preventing abuse is open, honest communication. When dialogue is encouraged among coaches, athletes, and parents, it makes it harder for an offender …

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Up Your Coaching Game: Create a Safer Environment

Let’s face it. Coaching can be complicated. As a coach, you’re a mix of coach, parent, educator, and motivator. You see the promise in your athletes, pushing them to achieve things they might not have thought possible. Celebrating their successes and counseling them through short-comings, you develop a close personal relationship with the athletes you …

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Modeling Healthy Boundaries as a Coach

Cheer and dance stunts are activities that require incredible skill and dedication. Athletes perform intense, backbreaking routines that the average person could never accomplish. From extensions to liberty to air tosses, the result can be breathtaking. Just like a flyer relies on the support of their bases’ hands as they prepare to lift, personal boundaries …

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Being a Safe Adult to your Athletes

Cheerleaders in a line
As a coach, you are a big part of your athlete’s lives. Competitive sports are demanding but rewarding, and you see your athletes through a lot. Kids need to know that they are valued and believed in, so your role as a coach is crucial. Because one in 10 children will be sexually abused before …

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Talking to Teens about Healthy Relationships

It’s the moment many parents dread: your teenager has been asked out on their first date. You may feel like they’re too young (let’s be honest, you think anything younger than 30 years old is too young) but they are over the moon to be going out with their crush. This is uncharted territory for …

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