Most athletes finish a season, shake hands, and never find out what the coach actually thought. That's a wasted year of information. Here's the end-of-season conversation that gets you an honest evaluation, a winter plan, and a coach who remembers you in March — and the three questions that make it work.
The fall season ends the same way for most athletes: a last game, a handshake line, a team dinner, and then silence until spring. The coach who watched you every day for three months — who knows exactly what's between you and the next level — goes home with that information still in their head. You never ask for it. By March, they've forgotten the specifics.
Ten minutes fixes this. Here's how to use them.
Not your parent. You. "Coach, could I get ten minutes this week to talk about how the season went and what I should work on?" Coaches say yes to this almost every time, because the players who ask are the players they want more of. The asking is itself a signal — it says you're coachable and you're thinking past the season.
Timing: the week after the last game. Not the parking lot after a loss. Not mid-practice. A scheduled ten minutes where the coach has had time to think.
Pull out your phone and type the three answers while the coach is talking. It shows you're serious, and you will not remember the exact wording by dinner. Those three lines are your winter plan.
Take the "one thing holding you back" and make it the organizing idea of the off-season. If it's first-step quickness, your winter is speed work. If it's decision-making under pressure, your winter is film and small-sided games. If it's strength, your winter is the weight room, done right. Everything else is secondary. The athletes who come back visibly different in the spring are almost always the ones who worked on one thing instead of everything.
Then, in February, send the coach a two-line message: "You told me to work on X. Here's what I did." Coaches remember the players who close the loop. That message is worth more than most camps.
Have the conversation anyway. An honest evaluation from someone who watched you for a season is useful no matter who coaches you next — and a coach who's leaving is often the most candid one you'll ever talk to.
If you keep a Lightning profile, drop the three answers in your notes alongside the season's stats. Next fall, you'll be able to see whether the one thing actually changed — and so will the coach.
— Christian Bentley, Founder, First Step Athletics