A coach's job is knowing what each person needs to hear. The speaker's mother coached swimmers and could read every athlete's psychology so precisely that teammates still remember her for it. That skill, coaches say, matters more than any generic playbook.
I was a swimmer on the sport of swimming, and I was in the sports. Some of these people were my friends that I grew up with swimming because my mom was a club coach and a college coach, and I'd run into them and they'd go, your mom was rough on me. She knew exactly what I needed to hear. And then others would say, wow, your mom was always there. And you'd hear this lucky version because that's the same coach. They understood their people, right? And that's what we want to be able to do. And by the way, professional coaches in athletics, if you ever go listen to one of them talk, they will tell you this over and over again. You better know the psyche of everybody on that team, because that's how you're going to get the team to perform.
