What Coaches and Parents Should Be Watching Right Now (Late March Evaluation Window)
- Suzi Freeman
- Mar 25
- 3 min read
Late March is one of the most revealing stretches of the year for specialists. Pro Days are wrapping up, film is being reviewed, coaches are making quiet decisions, NFL staff are narrowing boards. And for college athletes, this is often the final push before depth charts start to take shape.
From the outside, most people are watching results. Makes, misses, distance, consistency. But that is not what actually tells you where an athlete stands. The real indicators show up before the result ever does.
Over the past few weeks, through the Draft Prep Series conversations, the same pattern keeps showing up across athletes at different levels. The ones who are trending in the right direction are not doing more. They are doing less, with more consistency. That distinction matters.
This is the time of year where pressure doesn't always look like pressure. It shows up subtly. It changes how an athlete approaches a rep without them fully realizing it. Coaches and parents usually miss this because they are looking for obvious breakdowns. The shift is almost always quieter than that.
What to Watch For (Before the Miss Happens)
The earliest signs of instability are not mechanical. They're behavioral. You will see small changes in tempo. An athlete may move slightly faster than normal, or hesitate just enough to disrupt timing. Their routine may look the same on the surface, but the pacing is off. You may notice more talking than usual. Explaining, analyzing, or trying to justify what just happened. That is often a sign they are moving out of trust and into control.
Body language can change as well. Not in a dramatic way, but in subtle tension. Shoulders tighten, movements lose rhythm, the rep starts to look guided instead of natural. None of this guarantees a miss. But it tells you the athlete is starting to drift. If you wait for the miss to react, you are already late.
Where Coaches and Parents Unintentionally Make It Worse
This is where most well-intentioned support goes sideways. When a specialist starts to feel that shift internally, the instinct from the outside is to help them “fix it.”
That usually sounds like:
“Just focus more”
“Stay locked in”
“Make sure you finish”
“You know what to do”
The problem is, those cues increase control. And control, under pressure, is what disrupts execution.
The athlete is already trying to manage the moment. Adding more to think about does not stabilize them. It adds load.
What Actually Helps in This Window
The specialists who are holding up right now are doing one thing consistently. They are keeping their operation the same. Same routine. Same tempo. Same decision-making. From a coaching or parent standpoint, the role is not to add. It is to protect that.
That means:
Keeping language simple and consistent
Avoiding new cues or corrections during high-stakes reps
Reinforcing what is already working, not introducing something new
Letting the athlete return to their established rhythm without interference
If something needs to be addressed, it should happen outside of the pressure moment, not inside it.
This is not about being hands-off. It is about being precise with when and how you step in.
A Simple Way to Evaluate What You’re Seeing
If you are unsure what is happening with your specialist, watch for what changes first.
Is it their body? Do they look tighter or less fluid? Is it their focus? Are they more inward, more analytical, more reactive? Is it their tempo? Are they rushing or slowing down compared to their normal rhythm?
That first shift is usually the entry point of pressure. Once you can identify that, you can stop chasing the result and start understanding the pattern.
Final Thoughts
At this stage of the year, the difference between athletes is rarely talent. It's whether they can keep their execution stable when the environment gets louder, faster, and more important. Most athletes don't need more information right now. They need fewer disruptions.
If you're a coach or a parent, your value in this moment is not in what you add. It is in what you keep clean. If you are watching an athlete whose performance seems to change under pressure and you can't pinpoint why, that's not random. There is a pattern behind it.
That is exactly what the Specialist Diagnostic Assessment™ is built to identify and break down so you're not guessing during the most important part of the year.
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By: Coach Suzi Freeman, Mental Performance Coach & Master NLP Practitioner
Coach Suzi focuses on Special Teams Players
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