Grit: How the Pandemic May Be Making Student-Athletes Even Stronger
Grit is Worth Prioritizing
This post includes survey results from over 2,000 student-athletes about grit and the things that contribute to grit. But it begins with how or if Coaches and Administrators prioritize grit.
What if Coaches built rosters based on student-athletes with passion, perseverance, and a commitment to improve? What if they put those qualities on equal footing with physical skills and academic ability? What if Coaches intentionally recruited for this kind of grit and deliberately coached to improve grit once those student-athletes were in their programs?
My obsession with grit is founded on a simple belief: grit is a predictor of success across many walks of life from elementary education to employment. And I bet it’s a predictor of the success student-athletes will have in your program and for a lifetime after.
A Truth About Grit that Coaches Know
In collegiate athletics, where both physical traits and academic capacity are critical, grit alone won’t propel a student-athlete to success. That said, when I ask Coaches to tell me about the most successful student-athletes in their program’s history, they almost never begin by talking about their most physically gifted alumni.
The words and phrases I hear most frequently by Coaches in describing their most successful student-athletes are: “loved the game, always had a [ball/stick/other] in her hand, focused, coachable, hard-working, a great practice player.”
And often, those descriptors - all of which tie to grit - are followed by details about their athletic ability or “high [sport] IQ.” In other words, natural talent alone didn’t make them great - grit did.
Coaches Should Try the “Grit Scale”
The formal, defined concept of “grit” rose in interest starting with University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth’s 2013 TED talk and her 2016 book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Since then, I’ve had frequent conversations about grit with coaches, educators, marketers, parents, and others- all individuals who are connected to teens and young adults.
When the concept of grit arises, it’s usually in a negative context - as in, today’s student-athletes do not show the kind of grit that previous generations are alleged to have had.
I’m not certain what we think we are seeing is always fact. I think we should try to measure anything we can. While there is certainly complexity to understanding things like passion, perseverance, a learning mindset, Duckworth’s Grit Scale is a great start. I urge Coaches to try the Grit Scale with their student-athletes.
As Duckwork says, while it has limitations, it’s useful as a prompt for self-reflection and conversation about evolving passion and perseverance. It’s free, easy to use and consists of only 10 questions and takes about 2 minutes to complete. It produces a “Grit Score” on a scale of 1-5. The higher the score, the greater the number of American adults the participant is “grittier” than. (Example, scoring a 4.0 means may mean you scored higher than about 70% of American adults in a recent study.)
Grit Insights in the Middle of a Pandemic
I used the Grit Scale to survey a statistically significant sample of student-athletes - 1,065 of them - twice in the last year. My sample has a margin of error of 3%.
My first survey was in January (pre-pandemic) and then again in October (about 8 months into the pandemic.) Note: My intent was not to measure the role of the pandemic on grit. Obviously, in January, none of us knew of the pandemic or its significance. I was merely studying it because it’s of interest to Coaches and Administrators. But it’s impossible to now ignore the role that the pandemic played.
Student-Athletes who completed the Grit Scale in January scored an average of 3.6/5.0. Student-Athletes who completed the Grit Scale in October scored an average of 4.09/5.0.
The bottom line: student-athletes are not wilting under the pressure and uncertainty of the pandemic. They actually scored higher in October than in January. They consider themselves more passionate and persevering today than nine months ago.
How Coaches Can Train to Improve Grit
Let’s start with the obvious: just like you can’t train the slowest student-athlete on your team to be the next Usain Bolt, you can’t train your least gritty team member to act like a Navy Seal. But when we break grit down into some of its parts, Coaches and Administrators begin to see that those parts can be trained.
And as grit will have more to do with the future success of a student-athlete than almost anything else, training for grit may be a Coach’s greatest achievement.
Let’s jump back to the 2,130 (combined) student-athletes I surveyed in January and October. In addition to the Grit Scale, I asked them a series of questions about their student-athlete experience. The questions were about:
Stretch goals - expectations they have or don’t have that go beyond their current performance
Focus - their ability or inability to not getting easily distracted with other/new interests
Refinement - their openness to getting their coach’s feedback and putting it into action
While these statistics don’t paint a necessarily negative picture of student-athletes in the areas of goals, focus, and feedback, they do seem to suggest that improvement can be made if prompted by Coaches.
So What Can Coaches Do to Train Grit?
The student-athletes I surveyed say many of the same things that are at the heart of Duckworth’s work. I’ve summarized the student-athlete feedback below. I’ve included the five main sentiments within the data and then a student-athlete quote that illustrated that sentiment:
Provide safety to fail (“When I finally got to be a starter, I didn’t want to screw up. Sometimes I just move the ball instead of shooting because I’m afraid if I miss, I’ll lose my spot.”)
Train weaknesses (“I’m a Senior now, but last year before the season was canceled, I was 3 yr. starter. My coach spends too much time working on stuff we’re good at. He thinks we can’t take it.”)
Create an inspired environment (“When when one of my teammates who doesn’t play that much does something really good, she [the coach] talks about it and it gets us all fired up.”)
Stress the importance of goals (“We’re really good, but I think it’s weird that we never talk about winning a championship.”)
Provide “surrogate grit” (“In my first year, all I did was lose. I wanted to quit [the team] so many times. I still loved it, but I didn’t think I was good enough to be here. My coach would say, “don’t quit today - quite tomorrow if you want.” But she kept saying it, like tomorrow never came. I’m not the best, but I’m pretty good now. I don’t know what would have happened if I did quit.”