Selecting the Team’s Captains

Last week’s column urged coaches to trust their players to make many of the team’s decisions throughout the season. Like the rest of us, young players learn leadership skills best by leading, and not simply by listening to leaders.

I wrote that my 9-10-year-old squirt hockey teams had rotating tri-captains so that each player could experience two or three chances at team leadership by the end of the playoffs. But there is more to the story. The high school team’s tri-captains selected at the beginning of the season served without change all year. Why the difference?

How to structure the captaincy is one of the coaches’ most important pre-season decisions because the captains, like the coaching staff itself, help set the tone and maintain discipline. The coaches’ decision warrants more extended discussion than one paragraph in last week’s column because what works at one age level might not work at another. Even at a particular age level, what works for one team might not work for another. This column describes what worked for my squirt and high school teams over the years, based on the core proposition that captains in younger age groups play a role different than captains on older teams.

The difference relates to supervision and team morale. The coaches cannot hear and see everything, so they need help from other eyes and ears. Someone else, for example, must help supervise players in the locker room, and in hotels and restaurants on road trips. Someone else must help read the team’s pulse if players, outside the coaches’ earshot, seem cocky during a winning streak or despondent during a losing streak. Someone else must help maintain team spirit from day to day.

When can the captains be that “someone else”?

Captains at the Younger Age Levels

At the younger age levels, the parents are typically the “someone else” – the coaches’ extended eyes and ears — because it is unrealistic to expect younger players to supervise or report about one another. Our 9-10-year-old squirt players were good kids who got along with one another and did not look for trouble, but even good kids at that age need adult supervision before and after games.

Until the last five minutes or so before pregame warmup, the squirt team’s parents would typically be in the locker room to help their players dress and lace up their skates. As the coaches tended to obligations elsewhere in the rink, the parents would help keep an eye on things. On road trips, the parents were the best supervisors of their own children’s behavior. The team did not experience bullying or anything similar, but if a particular player feels left out, the coaches’ best reporters are parents and not teammates.

With supervision and reporting left to the adults, rotating the squirt team’s captaincy from game to game made sense. By the end of the season, rotation gave each player three chances to be a leader in the locker room before the game, and then as the team huddled moments before the referee dropped the puck for the opening faceoff. Some players were tentative and shy the first time, but they grew into the role by the playoffs, when the players sometimes asked the coaches to leave the locker room so they could do the pre-game pep talk themselves. The coaches were pleased to oblige because we enjoyed letting the 9-10-year-olds take the initiative.

Captains at the Older Age Levels

As players move toward the high school level, the calculus changes. Parents no longer frequent the locker room, players may seek a measure of independence in hotels and restaurants, and players do not necessarily report their peer discussions to their parents. Captains can now play supervisory and reporting roles, which game-to-game rotation would upset by assuring that no captain would serve for more than a day at a time.

Players and parents alike are often surprised at how much the coach does not know about what is happening on the team. Each parent pays special attention to one player, each player knows his or her own feelings, and parents and their child live under the same roof around the clock. The coach, however, must manage a dozen or more players at a time, cannot be everywhere at once, and cannot always sense what might be bothering an individual player.

The captains can listen to teammates, and may even help the coach prevent potential trouble. Much trouble is planned rather than spontaneous, and troublemakers generally do not talk or act while the coach is around. Every time I read about another hazing incident on a high school team, for example, I wonder whether responsible captains could have short circuited the violence by confronting the ringleaders or alerting the coaches before the ritual caused injury and embarrassed or destroyed the team. Benjamin Franklin said that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and high school captains can be effective agents of prevention.

As captains fulfill their supervisory and reporting roles, coaches should respect the captains’ delicate position as liaisons between the staff and the other players. Teammates respond best when they perceive the captains as extensions of the coaching staff, but not as snitches. The staff should reassure the captains that except in an emergency, they are expected only to alert the staff that “some players” are talking about hazing, alcohol use or something similar. Or that “the team” seems down about a tough loss or cavalier about a winning streak. Even without knowing identities, experienced coaches know how to overcome barriers to team success when they sense a general concern. 

Selecting Captains at the Older Age Levels

On older teams, the captains’ role depends on the coaches’ early assessment of the team’s character and needs. Our high school team had tri-captains, not only because the coaches felt that the job was too much for one player, but also because we wanted three players to earn a leadership credential that would soon strengthen their college and employment applications. A threesome also increased the likelihood that each team member would feel comfortable discussing issues with at least one captain, including issues that the player might initially not want to discuss with a coach directly.

The coaches might decide, of course, to have only one captain, or else two co-captains. Where the team will have only one captain, I would usually opt for letting the players vote unless the selection appears obvious, but the coaches may conclude that the team would be better served by a captain appointed by the staff. 

The coaches on our high school team usually appointed one or two tri-captains, and the players usually voted on the other one or two by secret ballot. The coaches’ appointment can send a message about their expectations for the team, but players feel a greater stake in the team when they participate in selecting their leaders.

Before the balloting, the coaches would assemble the team and discuss the criteria that should determine their votes for the team’s leaders. The election is not a popularity contest to reward friends, a referendum to anoint the team’s stars, or an opportunity to recognize seniors. The captains should be teammates who project the image everyone wants and, equally important, teammates whose leadership everyone would heed because the coaches often speak through the captains.

On our high school team, the captains’ election itself was a learning tool because coaches would tell the players that if their ballots departed from these criteria, the team would have to live with the adverse consequences all season. In my years of coaching, the players acted responsibly and never made a choice that they or the coaches had reason to regret. The elected captains were players whom the coaches themselves would have been pleased to appoint, and each captain made a meaningful contribution to the team.