Last year, my assistant coach (I don't have one this year) said to me once after getting irritated at the lack of commitment by some of the kids, "You can't make them care." At the time I just disregarded his comment because it really didn't help. On the way to work today, I remembered that and made a connection to something I told the kids the first day: Don't stress over that which you can't control.
I told them this because athletes seem to spend a lot of time worrying about things outside the scope of their control. They can't, for example, control officials, parents, me, facility conditions, teammates, opponents, or most importantly, the past (namely in terms of mistakes made).
I should be taking my own advice. I can't control what they care about. I can do my best to influence them and guide them, but at the end of the day they make their own decisions.
There are a lot of other things in life we can't control, chief among them being weather and traffic. I certainly know that I let those things get to me at times.
So the plan at practice Sunday is to share with them how important their success is to me, and pretty much leave it at that. I'll also remind them that being up front and honest, even if I'm not going to like what they say, is critical to our success. Beyond that, I have to deal with whatever they do, because I can't control them.