Great teams have strong relationships that are built on trust and genuine friendships — among players, coaches and staff. It’s impossible to win at a high level without trust, relationships and communication. Here are a few team-building activities that can be done remotely or safely during the COVID-19 shutdown.
- Start a big brother or sister mentoring program — matching underclassmen with upperclassmen to build stronger relationships and help develop and encourage younger players
- Hold Zoom checkins with your position group, offense/defense, grad class or team meetings. Ask everyone to join with one idea to help the team improve, or to check in on each other’s progress and accountability.
- Hold Zoom with successful former players or interesting speakers who can provide advice or do a Q&A session
- Host a virtual talent contest
- Host a virtual theme night where everyone dresses up in costumes
- Host a group yoga or meditation session online
- Host a Jeopardy-style quiz game or trivia night online
- Two truths and a lie over Zoom — everyone reveal two truths about themselves and one lie, with teammates guessing which is the untruthful statement
- Virtual scavenger hunt
- Play virtual charades and break off into teams by offense/defense or grad class
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- Bucket list confessions online session – everyone reveal one of their biggest bucket list items so you can learn more about teammates off-field interests
- Building a storyline — start with a crazy opening line, and each player in jersey number order adds the next sentence to create a funny story over Zoom
- Play Guess Who over Zoom — everyone submits random facts about themselves and teammates/coaches have to guess who it matches with
- Socially distant or virtual meetups for off-field relationship building (fishing, video game competitions, etc) and/or drill workouts in position/small groups
- Shoutout teammates on social media who have made improvements, help encourage others
- Create a long-term competitions to help motivate each other — who can make the biggest improvement in certain areas like speed, strength training, conditioning, weight gain/loss, grades, etc.
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