If you want to have a great, united team on your hands, you might want to memorize some coaching quotes beforehand. Full of inspiration and positivity (with little to no cursing), these phrases accomplish several things in a span of just a few lines. They can inspire young players on the team to reach for the heights and motivate old ones to keep going and pushing.
Coaches often use motivational quotes to try to push the players to their maximum potential. In the heat of the game, with only a few minutes left, players might pull out a victory thanks to some inspiring phrases. A string of words aligned in the perfect combination can deliver a dose of positivity just good enough to reach that sweet victory.
If you are a team manager or about to coach some kids in a basketball game, read up on some good coach quotes. After all, coaches are the ones who push their teams to well-fought victories.
Like you did in the recent post on leadership quotes, make sure to upvote coach quotes that gave you a motivation boost. On the other hand, if you have used some of them, share your stories in the comments down below.
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"Being ourselves means sometimes having to find the courage to stand alone, totally alone." – Brené Brown
"A coach should never be afraid to ask questions of anyone he could learn from." – Bobby Knight
"It is fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons from failure." – Bill Gates
"When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less." – Paul Brown
"The superior man blames himself. The inferior man blames others." – Don Shula
I blame the wealthy, the government, society, and existence in general.
"Success isn't permanent, and failure isn't fatal." – Mike Ditka
"It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up." – Vince Lombardi
"The key is not the will to win. Everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important." – Bobby Knight
"Champions behave like champions before they are champions." – Bill Walsh
"You can see and you can listen, but you have to have moments in which you feel." – Mike Krzyzewski
"Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat him as he could be, and he will become what he should be." – Jimmy Johnson
"The measure of who we are is how we react to something that doesn’t go our way." – Greg Popovich
Is this another one of those 'America will use anything but the metric system' things?
"I had to lift players' expectations. They should never give in. I said that to them all the time: "If you give in once, you'll give in twice." – Sir Alex Ferguson
"Never quit. It is the easiest cop-out in the world. Set a goal and don’t quit until you attain it. When you do attain it, set another goal, and don’t quit until you reach it. Never quit." – Bear Bryant
"An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise." – Red Auerbach
"If you want to win, do the ordinary things better than anyone else does them day in and day out." – Chuck Noll
"The interesting thing about coaching is that you have to trouble the comfortable and comfort the troubled." – Ric Charlesworth
"Set goals – high goals for you and your organization. When your organization has a goal to shoot for, you create teamwork, people working for a common good." – Bear Bryant
"One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than a hundred teaching it." – Knute Rockne
"Victory is in having done your best. If you’ve done your best, you’ve won." – Bill Bowerman
"What do you do with a mistake: recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it." – Dean Smith
"Talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling." – Bill Belichick
"Do your best when no one is looking. If you do that, then you can be successful in anything that you put your mind to." – Bob Cousy
"The test of success is not what you do when you’re on top. Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom." – General George Patton
"To build a strong team, you must see someone else’s strength as a complement to your weakness, and not a threat to your position or authority." – Henry Ford
"A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be." – Rosalynn Carter
"A coach is someone who tells you what you don't want to hear, who has you see what you don't want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be." – Tom Landry
"Coaches have to watch for what they don’t want to see and listen to what they don’t want to hear." – John Madden
"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are." – John Wooden
"You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them but by building a fire within." – Bob Nelson
"You have exactly one life in which to do everything you’ll ever do. Act accordingly." – Colin Wright
"In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I'm going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here’s a chance to grow." – Carol Dweck
"Coaching works because it’s all about you. When you connect with what you really want take action – magical things can happen." – Emma-Louise Elsey
"In football, the worst things are excuses. Excuses mean you cannot grow or move forward." – Pep Guardiola
"What keeps me going is not winning, but the quest for reaching potential in myself as a coach and my kids as divers. It's the pursuit of excellence." – Ron O’Brien
"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming." – John Wooden
"In basketball — as in life — true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way." – Phil Jackson
"The best teams have chemistry. They communicate with each other and sacrifice personal glory for the common goal." – Dave DeBusschere
"You can't get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good." – Jerry West
"If you are not in the arena getting your a*s kicked, I’m not interested in or open to your feedback." – Brené Brown
"A life coach does for the rest of your life what a personal trainer does for your health and fitness." – Elaine MacDonald
"When I was a young coach I used to say, 'Treat everybody alike.' That’s bull. Treat everybody fairly." – Bear Bryant
"My responsibility is leadership, and the minute I get negative, that is going to have an influence on my team." – Don Shula
"Don’t ever ask a player to do something he doesn’t have the ability to do. He’ll just question your ability as a coach, not his as an athlete." – Lou Holtz
"Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability."
"Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts." – Dan Gable
"You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self-motivation." – Homer Rice
"There are three types of baseball players: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who wonder what happens." – Tommy Lasorda
"When you encourage others, you in the process are being encouraged because you’re making a commitment to that person’s life. Encouragement really does make a difference." – Zig Ziglar
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
"In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, 'Oh, I’m going to reveal my weaknesses,” you say, “Wow, here’s a chance to grow.'" – Carol S. Dweck
"In the past a leader was a boss. Today’s leaders must be partners with their people… they no longer can lead solely based on positional power." – Ken Blanchard
"I never cease to be amazed at the power of the coaching process to draw out the skills or talent that was previously hidden within an individual, and which invariably finds a way to solve a problem previously thought unsolvable." – John Russell
"Each person holds so much power within themselves that needs to be let out. Sometimes they just need a little nudge, a little direction, a little support, a little coaching, and the greatest things can happen." – Pete Carroll
"The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves." – Steven Spielberg
"A lot of people put pressure on themselves and think it will be way too hard for them to live out their dreams. Mentors are there to say, 'Look, it's not that tough. It's not as hard as you think. Here are some guidelines and things I have gone through to get to where I am in my career.'" – Joe Jonas
"The interesting thing about coaching is that you have to trouble the comfortable, and comfort the troubled." – Ric Charlesworth
"Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it." – Michael Jordan
"Selecting the right person for the right job is the largest part of coaching." –
Phil Crosby
"Strength comes from struggle. When you learn to see your struggles as opportunities to become stronger, better, wiser, then your thinking shifts from 'I can’t do this’ to ‘I must do this.'" – Toni Sorensen
"Coaching helps you to take responsibility for your life, let go of what others think and become your true self. It’s about you creating the life that you want – and deserve." – Emma-Louise Elsey
"I celebrate a victory when I start walking off the field. By the time I get to the locker room, I'm done." – Tom Osborne
"If you’re going to have a team of role players, then you better have a team of players who truly understand their roles." – Steve Kerr
