A recent question sent into The Coaches Site really spoke to me as a coach. While the question itself is aimed at a specific age, I think its answer can apply to many ages.

"Can you teach a child 6 year old effort? Can children be taught how to compete hard or is it something they either have, don't have or with grow into or not?"

Effort is tough to measure. I have coached kids whose 100% effort looks like someone else’s 65% effort, and I have seen this at every level.

However, I think you can learn a kid's baseline and work within that, knowing that all kids develop at different speeds so you can’t force some of it, but you can encourage it.

The second part to this question is about teaching compete. I think these can go a bit hand in hand. It’s about motivating a player to do nothing more than try. 

The first step in all of this is fun. I have written more than once about keeping practices game-like, moving away from box drills and using small area games and station based practices to keep practices fun.

An element you can add to any game to keep it motivating is keeping score. This isn’t always scoring goals, but it could be the number of passes you make, shots you block, etc. 

Keeping score, and keeping the energy high will motivate players to compete to try and beat each other. Rewarding non-goal accomplishments also instills in players the importance of those types of plays. 

Too many times, I have had players who played incredible shifts come to the bench upset because they didn’t score. They have erased all the good they did and equated a good shift with points, rather than the great plays they created, the goals they stopped, or even the play that motivated the bench to keep fighting. 

When coaching the Pittsburgh Penguins, Dan Bylsma would often ask his players, “what can you do on the ice to give your teammates a boost?” This could be a big hit, a blocked shot, a rocket of a shot, you name it. 

Now, with kids, I ask them the same thing: can you find ways to motivate each other? You can extend this to practice too. After the skate, have kids stand in a circle, and each player should go around and tell the person next to them something they saw them do at practice that stood out positively. 

Allow them to motivate each other. 

On the opposite side of this, I also want to touch on how not to motivate players, as you may see a quick return, but long term damage. 

I cannot count how often I hear, “my dad said he will give me $5 for every goal I score.” And what you will see is a player who is motivated as ever to score a goal. You will also see a player motivated as ever to not pass and take shots from every angle they can find. 

I will warn against paying for assists too. You will find a kid who won’t take a shot.

Instead, talk to players and parents and remind them that scoring is reward enough, we don’t need financial or other outside motivators. I also remind them that paying for goals teaches them that only goals are worth something on the ice. 

In the end, the only players who aren’t motivated and won’t compete are the kids who don’t want to be on the ice. Those players stand out pretty quick as they don’t seem to lack compete, they lack a desire to even go in a drill, or ask to leave the ice a lot. 

If you keep practice fun, and make the games rewarding in their own right, you will find that kids effort and compete level increases each time they step on the ice.