What Player's Need More than Skill

Author

Cindy Bristow
November 10, 2025

Total Reading Time: 3 minutes

Happy Monday - signing day is around the corner so I’m keeping it brief today. Let’s take a look at something that players need to succeed - and it isn’t just skill.

So Let’s Go!

Table of Contents

What Players Need More than Skill

We do a lot of things as coaches, but fundamentally, we are in the “belief” business. More than skill teachers or data analysts - we are merchants of belief - getting our players to believe in themselves, in their teammates, in their future skill. Heck believe in us.

Belief is tricky. It ebbs and flows. Both theirs as well as ours. Skill is great, but without belief skill crumbles at the first sign of pressure.

As adults, our belief can be stronger because we’ve done it longer. It can also be more patient as our age can give us wisdom.

While our player’s youth can make their belief more impatient and much more fragile, as if they need proof before they believe.

But if we look back in history, this “see if before we believe it” situation isn’t unusual. Take the internet for example, if we look back at the comments about it at the time it was invented everybody needed to see it to believe it - and even then, nobody thought it would work:

"The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works." — Clifford Stoll, Newsweek, 1995

"The Internet won't change anything." — Newsweek headline

"The 'Net is a waste of time." — The New York Times Magazine, 1996

"I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." — Robert Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet), 1995

Is there somebody on your team who currently lacks some belief? Somebody whose skill might be bigger than their belief? Or maybe it’s an assistant coach.

Who needs your infusion of belief this week? Skill is fragile without belief - so be that Merchant of Belief.

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Thanks for reading this week’s Curveball Chronicles. I hope you gained some insight, some encouragement, some knowledge or some grace.

Go make this a Great week!

Missed some previous issues? Don’t worry, I’ve got them all on my website: https://pitchingcoachcentral.com/curveball-newsletter/

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