8 In-Season Team Building Ideas

Mother Teresa used to say, “I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.” When you coach a team sport, talent is not the end all be all. Sure it’s important but how those talented individuals come together is what really matters. Filling in the gaps for one another, having each other’s back, and lifting each other up can be much more important than the “measurables”.

Here are eight team building ideas you can use during your season …

• Practice sessions
• Team meals
• Community service
• Serving food
• Shoe box giving
• Retreat
• Treasure items
• Plan an event

Realize, however, that when it comes to team building, there are no magical activities. You can do a great activity but have a poor attitude and it doesn’t end up working. Conversely, an informal, unofficial get together can produce amazing results with the right attitude. 

How you do anything is how you do everything. Anything you do can be a “team building” activity if you have an eye on having a strong and healthy culture.

Practice sessions

Every practice session brings endless possibilities for building a stronger team. It’s long been said that individual training sessions are when athletes get better and practice sessions are when teams get better. Make your practice sessions fun, engaging, and meaningful. Being creative and even spontaneous isn’t a bad thing.

Empowering your athletes to plan part of practice or have input in the session can go a long way toward building trust and connection. Including team components in as many areas of your sessions as possible can be beneficial. Encouraging your athletes to encourage one another (as well as being a positive coach yourself) creates a positive atmosphere.

Look for ways to create a sense of togetherness with your athletes. How can you facilitate them rallying around each other in a healthy manner. Finally, don’t be afraid to cut out practice time to do some team building activities. Build a strong team is almost always more important than a few extra minutes of X’s and O’s and skill development when you are coaching a team sport.

Team meals

Food might be the best tool for bringing people together. Don’t just look at meals or snacks as a necessity, see them as an opportunity to bring your team closer together. Be creative. Serve different kinds of foods in different settings. Give them input into what or how the food is served. Have them over to your house (or one of your assistants). Eat at the house of a booster, teacher, or another coach. Let them cook or be responsible for what the meal is. Never miss an opportunity to get together for some food or snacks.

Community Service

It’s not easy trying to bring a collection of individuals together to form a cohesive unit. They have to sacrifice individual agendas and desires while serving their teammates in some capacity. Performing community service activities is similar to this. Your athletes will be doing something they probably don’t want to do so that it helps someone else. When doing community service, they become part of something bigger than themselves, much like when they are part of a team.

Performing community service is one of the best team building activities you can do because it reinforces unselfishness and teamwork, while literally helping somebody. There is a tangible positive outcome that your athletes can see.

Give your athletes choices in which community service activities they can do. Maybe do one big event each year as a team but then have each athlete choose one or two additional activities. You can stipulate that any activity they choose must include two or three teammates so that there is a team aspect to the community service activity. Many athletes will not want to initially participate in these activities so make it as fun, worthwhile, and impactful as possible. Letting them have input will also minimize some of the grumbling that accompanies required activities.

Serving food

Serving food or helping at a soup kitchen or shelter is a great way for your team to bond while being a blessing to others. However, you do something similar at your own school. Take a day and serve the lunch at school. Give the cafeteria workers a little break. If serving food isn’t a possibility, then bus trays for people eating or get drink refills. Find ways to be helpful to your campus community. You could wear your game jerseys or travel gear. Not only will it provide opportunities to bond but it promotes your program in a good light.  

Shoe box giving

You could participate in “Operation Christmas Child” sponsored by Samaritan’s Purse or do your own version of it. Collect or save a bunch of shoe boxes and then fill them up with cool stuff to be donated to the YMCA, Boys & Girls Club, or some other local organization. Split up your team into smaller groups and each is responsible for filling a box. You can even give them a little money to buy stuff from Walmart or the dollar store. If you have team items (shirts, lanyards, trading cards, noise makers, stickers, etc…), you can include those as well. You could also include an encouraging note.

Retreat

Take some time to get away and intentionally bond. Retreats don’t have to be huge ordeals that last multiple days (though those are perfectly fine). Your retreat could be as simple as using someone’s house for a day who happens to have a pool. You have fun, swim, cookout, play games, and chat for a few minutes about some goals. Maybe you do something for a whole weekend and allow your athletes to have a part in the planning process. Rent an Airbnb or find a teacher, coach, or booster that has a big house and use that for the weekend. Pay for them to stay in a hotel for a few nights as a sort of mini vacation.

Treasured Items

Get your team together in a comfortable setting (with food, of course) and have them share memories, thoughts, feelings, and stories. One of the best ways to do this is to have them bring three personal items (at least one being a picture) to the get-together. You then take turns talking about the items and why they mean so much. This gives a better glimpse into each team member’s mind and life. It’s amazing what kind of bonding can come out of this kind of session.

Plan an event

Putting on an event can develop camaraderie during the planning phase as well as the implementation stage. There are so many team building opportunities when you plan an event. The types of events you could plan are endless, such as tournaments, contests, meals, fundraisers, giveaways, banquets, ceremonies, festivals, tailgating, or parades. You could do a haunted house, corn maze, costume contest, or trunk-or-treat during Halloween as one example of using a holiday or special occasion to plan an event. It could be for your school only or include the community. The sky’s the limit on what you can come up with to have fun and further build your team’s connection with one another.

Together. Everyone. Achieves. More.

It might be cliché but together everyone achieves more when the team is built in such a way that the team members trust, respect, and connect with one another. Just like Mother Teresa’s quote earlier, team members can accomplish so much more together than they can individually. No team member is perfect and so they need each other.

Building a strong team means maximizing the strengths of your team members and minimizing the weaknesses of each team member. It means putting together a puzzle in which each piece is valuable and plays a crucial role. This is only possible if each team member comes together for a common goal and lifts each other up.

Soccer legend Mia Hamm used to say, “I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it, and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.” If you want your athletes to have a mentality like Mia Hamm, then be intentional about fostering such an environment. This mentality doesn’t just happen by accident.