You want your kid to be confident. To believe in themselves. To walk onto the field like they belong there.
But somewhere between "I've got this" and "I'm the best one here," things get tricky.
Because confidence is great. Coaches love confident kids. Confident kids take risks, bounce back from mistakes, and compete hard when it matters. But ego? Ego makes kids hard to coach. It makes them resistant to feedback. It makes them blame teammates, refs, and bad luck instead of looking in the mirror.
The line between confidence and ego isn't always obvious. And as a parent, you're walking it every day, whether you realize it or not.
What Confidence Actually Looks Like
Confident athletes believe they can improve. They trust their preparation. They're willing to try hard things because they're not afraid of falling short.
Here's the key: confidence is about self-trust, not comparison. A confident kid thinks, "I've put in the work and I'm ready to compete." They don't need to be better than everyone else to feel good about themselves. They just need to know they're giving their best effort.
Confident kids can hear tough feedback without crumbling. They can watch a teammate succeed without feeling threatened. They can lose a game and still walk away knowing they competed hard.
That's the sweet spot. Belief in yourself without needing to put others down to maintain it.
What Ego Actually Looks Like
Ego is confidence's loud, insecure cousin.
Kids with ego problems believe they're already great. Not "I can become great" but "I am great, and everyone should recognize it." They measure themselves constantly against teammates and opponents. They need external validation to feel okay.
Ego makes kids defensive. When a coach gives feedback, they hear criticism instead of help. When they make a mistake, they look for someone else to blame. When a teammate gets praise, they feel slighted.
The tricky part is that ego often looks like confidence from the outside. The kid who talks big, who struts around, who seems unshakeable. But underneath that swagger is usually fragility. Their self-worth is built on being the best, which means any evidence to the contrary feels like a threat.
These kids are exhausting to coach. Not because they lack talent, but because they can't receive information without filtering it through their need to be right.
Why Coachability Matters More Than Talent
Here's something every experienced coach knows: they'd rather have a coachable kid with moderate talent than an uncoachable kid with elite talent.
Coachable kids improve. They listen, they adjust, they get better over time. Uncoachable kids plateau. They hit the ceiling of their natural ability and stay there because they can't absorb new information.
The best athletes at any level, the ones who actually make it, are almost always described the same way: hard workers who listen and adapt. The "natural" who won't take feedback rarely goes as far as their talent suggests.
When you raise a coachable kid, you're giving them something more valuable than any skill. You're giving them the ability to keep growing, in sports and in everything else.
The Parent Trap
Here's where it gets uncomfortable: a lot of ego in young athletes comes from home.
Not intentionally. You're not trying to create a monster. But the way you talk about their performance, their teammates, and their coaches shapes how they see themselves.
If you constantly tell your kid they're the best one on the team, they start to believe it. And when evidence contradicts that belief (a coach who doesn't start them, a teammate who outperforms them), they don't adjust their self-image. They resent the evidence.
If you trash-talk coaches in the car ride home, your kid learns that coaches don't deserve respect. If you blame refs for every loss, your kid learns that external factors are always the problem. If you compare them favorably to teammates, they learn that their value depends on being better than others.
None of this builds confidence. It builds ego. And ego is brittle.
How to Build Confidence Without Feeding Ego
The goal is to raise a kid who believes in themselves AND can hear feedback. Who has swagger AND humility. Who competes hard AND respects opponents.
Here's how:
Praise effort and process, not outcomes and rankings. "You worked really hard on your free throws this week" builds confidence. "You're the best shooter on the team" builds ego.
Normalize feedback as part of growth. Talk about coaching as a gift, not a criticism. "Coach told you to move your feet more? That's great. That means she sees potential and wants to help you get better."
Model humility yourself. When you make a mistake, own it out loud. When someone gives you feedback, receive it gracefully. Your kid is watching how you handle being wrong.
Celebrate teammates' success. When another kid on the team does something great, point it out. "Did you see that play Marcus made? That was awesome." This teaches your kid that someone else's success doesn't diminish their own.
Ask questions that promote self-reflection. Instead of "Did you score?" try "What did you do well today? What do you want to work on?" This shifts the focus from external validation to internal growth.
Let them struggle. Confidence doesn't come from constant success. It comes from struggling, persisting, and eventually figuring it out. If you rescue them every time something gets hard, they never build real belief in their ability to handle adversity.
The Swagger-Humility Balance
The best competitors have both. They believe they can win AND they respect the process. They bring energy and intensity AND they listen to coaching. They're confident in their ability AND humble about how much they still have to learn.
This balance isn't something kids figure out on their own. They learn it from watching the adults around them. They learn it from how you talk about sports, about their performance, about the people who coach and compete against them.
You can raise a kid who walks onto the field with their head high. Who competes with fire. Who believes in themselves completely.
And that same kid can be humble enough to hear feedback, generous enough to celebrate teammates, and grounded enough to know that being good at a sport doesn't make them better than anyone else as a person.
That's not a contradiction. That's the goal.
The Long Game
Ego feels good in the moment. It's shiny and loud and looks like confidence if you don't look too closely.
But ego doesn't travel well. It doesn't hold up when the competition gets harder, when the feedback gets tougher, when the stakes get higher. Kids who run on ego eventually hit a wall, and they don't have the tools to get past it.
Confidence travels. It adapts. It grows. A confident kid who stays coachable keeps improving long after the ego-driven kid has stalled out.
Your job isn't to make your kid believe they're the best. It's to help them believe they can keep getting better. That's a foundation that lasts.
And honestly? It's also just more fun to coach. The coaches will thank you.
Ian Goldberg is the CEO of Signature Media and the Editor of the largest and fastest growing sports parenting newsletter. He's been recognized as an industry expert by the National Alliance for Youth Sports, the US Olympic Committee's Truesport, and the Aspen Institute's Project Play. Ian is also a suburban NJ sports dad of two teenage daughters and has over 2,000 hours of volunteer time coaching them (which he calls the most fun form of R&D for his newsletter content). Ian and his team provide players, coaches, parents and program directors with the articles and content they need to have a great sports season. Ian has spent most of his career in digital product development and marketing and got his start at the White House where he worked for the economic advisors to two US Presidents.
