Hard Doesn't Mean Harmful
Sport was never meant to make athletes comfortable. It was meant to make them capable.
Many college athletic departments promise student-athletes a positive experience.
And while it’s a worthy intention it’s also an unrealistic expectation - because somewhere along the way, we’ve redefined what “positive” means.
Positive has become synonymous with pleasant.
If an athlete is frustrated by limited playing time, the experience wasn’t positive.
If they were asked to play out of position for the good of the team, it wasn’t positive.
If practice started at 6:00 a.m. because multiple teams share one facility, it wasn’t positive.
If a coach delivered honest feedback that stung, it wasn’t positive.
But that’s not how sport (or growth) works.
Some of the most valuable moments in an athlete’s development don’t feel good while they’re happening.
Learning is frustrating. Accountability is uncomfortable. Improvement requires struggle. The temporary discomfort isn’t evidence that something has gone wrong. More often, it’s evidence that something important is happening.
The problem is that many parents, athletes, and even administrators have quietly shifted the expectation from provide a positive experience to keep athletes happy.
Those are two very different jobs.
A coach cannot prioritize long-term development while guaranteeing short-term happiness. The conversation an athlete needs most is often the one they least want to have.
Part of the confusion comes from another distinction we’ve blurred:
Psychological safety is not the same as psychological comfort.
Psychological safety means athletes know they are respected, valued, and able to ask questions, make mistakes, and receive feedback without fear of humiliation or retaliation.
Psychological comfort means never feeling disappointed, challenged, corrected, or uncertain.
Sport has never promised comfort, nor should it, as confidence is often built by working through discomfort - not avoiding it.
To be clear, we’ve made critically important progress. We know more today about mental health, trauma, and the importance of healthy coach-athlete relationships than we did a generation ago. Coaches absolutely need to create environments where athletes feel respected, supported, and where psychological safety is present.
But somewhere along the way, we’ve drifted from protecting athletes from harm to protecting them from hardship.
Those are not the same thing.
Hard doesn’t mean harmful.
Discomfort doesn’t mean danger.
Uncomfortable doesn’t mean unsafe.
Yet increasingly, emotionally difficult moments are described using language that suggests injury rather than challenge. When every uncomfortable conversation is treated as evidence of harm, coaches become hesitant to coach honestly, and athletes lose opportunities to develop one of life’s most valuable skills: recovering from discomfort without assuming they’ve been damaged by it.
Maybe it’s time to retire the promise of a positive experience.
Not because positivity isn’t important, but because it’s incomplete.
Instead, let’s promise an experience that is transformative.
One that is meaningful, challenging, supportive, memorable, and deeply human.
The purpose of coaching isn’t to create the most enjoyable four years of an athlete’s life. It’s to prepare them for the next forty. Because long after they’ve stopped playing, athletes rarely remember the seasons that were easiest..
They remember the ones that changed them.
With gratitude,
Betsy
(Thanks for being a subscriber! Please share this with anyone you feel may benefit from reading.)