Who Do You Send Him To?
You’re a basketball coach. You see a football practice drill. You’re mind immediately goes to “Ooohhh, I think there’s a way to use this in hoops.”
You’re a soccer coach. You see a tennis warm up. You’re brain screams “Yes, we could do that in lines of 4 instead of 1 on 1 and it would be great.”
Okay, so maybe that’s just my brain (although I have a sneaking suspicion there are a lot of you reading like this too), but that tendency to look for correlation from random sources is a good thing! “Curiosity is a Superpower” after all. But, the article I share above [originally posted on LinkedIn by Matthew Hood, EdD, CMPC] has me thinking there’s a danger to doing that without pause, especially when it comes to the well being of our players.
First, read the article. While it is full of technical jargon relating to the mental health industry, it is directly addressing the idea that numerous experts CROSSING LANES so to speak in to other’s lanes of expertise can be a problem for the very athletes they are trying to serve (not to mention the professional blow back that it can cause between various providers).
Second, I was very interested in Hood’s “org chart” so to speak of what Nutrition, Strength & Conditioning and Injury can be affected by (ie one can affect mood, one can affect emotional regulation, one can play a role in mood). While I still would ask him about the two way arrow I see in his statements (like, if S&C can affect identity, then identity can affect S&C), it’s a helpful diagram of the many ways your sport is going to hit your athletes.
Finally, though, the real TeamsOfMen tie in here, I believe, is an examination of your pathways.
What do I mean by pathways?
I mean IF & WHEN (because in 2026, it’s not really crazy to assume this is GOING TO HAPPEN to you and your team this year) you and your staff ID that a player is struggling as a person, what is the flow chart for getting him the help he needs?
What questions come up? Who gets called? Who decides if this is a coach convo, a parent call home or a mental health referral?
In my experience (at HS and D3 levels) that unfortunately is almost always a single person. Regardless of titles, degrees, or even capacity, this particular person in some office or job who has proven to give a damn and more importantly, is WILLING, gets assigned fire fighter duty over and over again. You send kids to them. You text them issues. You walk into their office with problems.
Now, these spaces all have one thing in common: They are under resourced. NO ONE is claiming the answer to NOT ONE “GOOD HERO” set up is “oh, well, we’ll just hire a team of all the right certifications” but the answer to “What is the path to help for a struggling young man” can’t be the same one person answer it is now either.
This is a TeamsOfMen type question that doesn’t require a CPMC or a MD or an SPLSW.
Coach Prompts
Think about the last player you realized needed help beyond what you could provide. Who did you send him to, and why that person?
If your program’s usual “go-to person” disappeared tomorrow, could your staff still explain the pathway for getting a struggling player help?
Where does your competence end? Can you identify the moment when “I can help this kid” needs to become “I need to help this kid find someone else”?
Player Prompts
If something was going wrong in your life that your coach couldn’t help you solve, do you know who you would go to next?
Who are the adults around your team that you trust for different kinds of problems? Are you relying on one person for everything?
Have you ever avoided asking for help because you didn’t know who the right person was or what would happen after you told them?
Having caring adults available is not the same as having an intentional system for what happens when an athlete needs help. DeCA examines whether your organization has built structures that reinforce what you say matters. One question worth adding to that examination: Could your coaches and athletes describe the same pathway from “we noticed something” to “this young man is getting the right help”?
