These Coaching Quotes can inspire you to achieve greatness. A coach can make or break a team. Most often, the fortunes of a team depend on the whims of one man – the coach.
Many great coaches have played the most important role in steering their teams to make history. It is not always that star player who is the most valuable asset. Coaches can get even the worst of players to become stars.
Here are some inspiring Coaching Quotes to inspire you as a player or in your day-to-day living to excel and succeed in your calling. Every great coach has something to teach the world. Let’s hope you will find the perfect motivation.
You might also be interested in our Motivational Quotes and our 73 Good Ted Lasso Quotes.
Best Coach Quotes
1.) A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.
John Wooden
2.) What makes a good coach? Complete dedication.
George Halas – Check out the Chicago Bears Fan Guide.
3.) I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum potential.
Bob Nardelli
4.) Selecting the right person for the right job is the largest part of coaching.
Phil Crosby
5.) Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.
George S. Halas
6.) The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
Jimmy Johnson
7.) Coaching is an action, not a title, and actions result in success.
Unknown
8.) The interesting thing about coaching is that you have to trouble the comfortable and comfort the troubled.
Ric Charlesworth
9.) To be as good as it can be, a team has to buy into what you, as the coach, are doing. They have to feel you’re a part of them, and they’re a part of you.
Bobby Knight
10.) Coaches have to watch for what they don’t want to see and listen to what they don’t want to hear.
John Madden
11.) Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.
Vince Lombardi – More Vince Lombardi Quotes.
12.) Coaching is 90% attitude and 10% technique.
Unknown
Tip: These coaching quotes and sayings make great captions for sports photographs posted on social media sites.
Coaching Quote Meme
Motivational Coaching Quotes
13.) Coaches are aware of how to ignite passion and motivate people. They have an energy that is contagious and knows exactly how to get their team excited.
Brian Cagney
14.) A good coach can change a game. A great coach can change a life.
John Wooden
15.) You must be personally reliable before you can coach your team to generate reliable results.
Lee Colan
16.) A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are.
Ara Parasheghian
17.) Successful coaches are visionaries. They have a picture of success set in their minds.
Gavin McGinnis
18.) As their coach, your job is to set the bar high, inspire them to reach this bar, encourage them, and most of all, guide them in the best possible manner and in the most supportive environment.
John Popovich
19.) The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer there are for a player to break.
John Madden
20.) A coach should never be afraid to ask questions of anyone he could learn from.
Bobby Knight
Funny Coaching Quotes
21.) Coaching is nothing more than eliminating mistakes before you get fired.
Lou Holtz
22.) You need to be more like a dog; we don’t need a bunch of cats in here – meow, looking in the mirror.
David Bennett
23.) Son, you’ve got a good engine, but your hands aren’t on the steering wheel.
Bobby Bowden
24.) My entire adult life, I’ve never used the expression game face. I have no idea what that means or what you’re supposed to do.
Bobby Knight
25.) I make my practices real hard because if a player is a quitter, I want him to quit in practice, not in a game.
Bear Bryant
26.) If lessons are learned in defeat, our team is getting a great education.
Murray Warmath
Check out 7 Ways to Build Confidence in Young Athletes.
Game Day Quotations
27.) I don’t believe in team motivation. I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on a field and be prepared to play a good game.
Tom Landry
28.) Some people want it to happen. Some wish it would happen. Others make it happen.
Michael Jordan
29.) When it’s a game situation, when it’s game day, a game time, when it’s World Cup, when it’s these tournaments that happen once every so often, I live for that. I live for that challenge.
Tiffany Milbrett
30.) It isn’t hard to be good from time to time in sports. What is tough is being good every day.
Willie Mays
31.) While I was coaching, I believe the motivation talk I gave my players that achieved the best results was in reference to their present game-day effort. Yesterday’s performance was already in history.
Bill Sharman
32.) You don’t show up on the game day and expect to be great. Greatness happens in practice. You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.
Michael Jordan
About Players
33.) Finding good players is easy. Getting them to play as a team is another story.
Casey Stengel
34.) On good teams, coaches hold players accountable. On great teams, players hold players accountable.
Joe Dumars
35.) 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
36.) I have never believed in comparisons, whether they are about different eras, players, or coaches.
Sachin Tendulkar
37.) I am constantly being asked about individuals. The only way to win is as a team. Football is not about one or two or three-star players.
Pele
38.) The winning of a pawn among good players of even strength often means the winning of the game.
Jose Raul Capablanca
39.) Make sure that team members know they are working with you, not for you.
John Wooden
40.) My advice to defensive players: Take the shortest route to the ball and arrive in bad humor.
Bowden Wyatt
About Coaching
41.) Coaching is a profession of love.
You can’t coach people unless you love them.
Eddie Robinson
42.) Failure is good. It’s fertilizer. Everything I’ve learned about coaching, I’ve learned from making mistakes.
Rick Pitino
43.) Good coaching is good teaching and nothing else.
Pat Conroy
44.) Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you.
Eddie Robinson
45.) Everything in coaching hinges on listening because what we are listening for affects where we are speaking from.
Marilyn Atkinson
46.) Good coaching may be defined as the development of character, personality, and habits of players, plus the teaching of fundamentals and team play.
Claire Bee
47.) Each person holds so much power within themselves that it 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
48.) The power of coaching is this – you are expected to give people the path to find answers, not the answers.
Tom Mahalo
49.) All coaching is, is taking a player where he can’t take himself.
Bill McCartney
Inspirational Coaching Quotes
50.) Talent is God-given – be humble. Fame is man-given – be thankful. Conceit is self-given – be careful.
John Wooden
51.) 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
52.) 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
53.) Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.
Pat Riley
54.) 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
55.) To reach your own goals and dreams, you must learn how to assist others in reaching theirs.
Joe Gibbs
56.) A common mistake among those who work in sports is spending a disproportional amount of time on “x’s and o’s” as compared to time spent learning about people.
Mike Krzyzewski
Notable Inspirational Quotes
57.) A life coach does for the rest of your life what a personal trainer does for your health and fitness.
Elaine MacDonald
58.) Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
Neale Donald Walsh
59.) Coaching is unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is more often helping them to learn rather than teaching them.
John Whitmore
60.) The secret to success is good leadership, and good leadership is all about making the lives of your team members or workers better.
Tony Dungy
61.) Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast, or a bridge player.
Bill Gates
62.) Too often, people get stuck in a state of overthinking; the result is that they never reach a decision.
Steve Backley
63.) I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum capabilities.
Bob Nardelli
64.) Winning is not a sometime thing; it is an all-the-time thing. You don’t do things right once in a while – you do them right all the time.
Vince Lombardi
Quotes to Encourage
65.) Champions behave like champions before they are champions.
Bill Walsh
66.) It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up.
Vince Lombardi
67.) Probably my best quality as a coach is that I ask a lot of challenging questions and let the person come up with the answer.
Phil Dixon
68.) They have to understand that it’s O.K. to have good days and bad days.
Dawn Staley
69.) Who, exactly, seeks out a coach?…Winners who want even more out of life.
Chicago Tribune
70.) You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them but by building a fire within.
Bob Nelson
John Wooden’s Insights on Coaching
71.) Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.
72.) Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
73.) In the end, it’s about the teaching, and what I always loved about coaching was the practices. Not the games, not the tournaments, not the alumni stuff. But teaching the players during practice was what coaching was all about to me.
74.) Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
75.) The most important thing in the world is family and love.
76.) Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.
77.) Never mistake activity for achievement.
78.) Don’t let making a living prevent you from making a life.
79.) Young people need models, not critics.
80.) You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.
81.) Make each day your masterpiece.
82.) Winning takes talent; to repeat takes character.
83.) All of life is peaks and valleys. Don’t let the peaks get too high and the valleys too low.
84.) Discipline yourself, and others won’t need to.
85.) Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.
Vince Lombardi Quotes
86.) It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up.
87.) Success is like anything worthwhile. It has a price. You have to pay the price to win, and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible. Most important, you must pay the price to stay there.
88.) I’ve never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline.
89.) Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.
90.) The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.
91.) There’s only one way to succeed in anything, and that is to give it everything. I do, and I demand that my players do.
92.) The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel — these are the things that will endure, and these are the qualities that are so much more important than any of the events themselves.
93.) If you’ll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.
94.) Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.
95.) There is no substitute for work.
Phil Jackson’s Coaching Quotes
96.) When the mind is allowed to relax, inspiration often follows.
97.) 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.
98.) No one plays this or any game perfectly. It’s the guy who recovers from his mistakes who wins.
99.) The strength of the team lies within the individual. And the strength of the individual lies within the team.
100.) Love is the force that ignites the spirit and binds teams together.
101.) Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart.
102.) Leadership is not about forcing your will on others. It’s about mastering the art of letting go.
To be a great leader, you are always learning. I hope you enjoyed these words of wisdom on coaching.
By Mike O’Halloran
Mike is a coach, author, and founder of Sports Feel Good Stories.
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