Coaching teenagers is different. They don’t want to be treated like little kids, but they’re also still learning how to be adults. And if you coach a senior team the same way you coach your minis or youth athletes, you’re probably going to create frustration for everyone involved.

In this episode, Danielle breaks down what she’s learned from more than a decade of coaching senior athletes, raising teenagers, and hosting teenage exchange students.

She talks about why teenagers often need immediate consequences, why tone doesn’t always mean what you think it means, how their best effort can look different from one practice to the next, and the coaching mistakes that can make an athlete shut down completely.

Most importantly, she explains why you can’t demand respect from teenage athletes. You have to earn it.

From handling corrections without embarrassing athletes to respecting the parts of their lives that have nothing to do with cheer, this episode is about learning to “speak teenager” and becoming the kind of coach your senior athletes trust, respect, and want to work hard for.