Let Your Captains Run the Room
Team Building Activities for Athletes – Empowering Captains Through Activities
If your captains’ main jobs are “coin toss” and “talk to the ref,” you’re wasting leadership.
One of the easiest ways to develop real captains is to hand them the keys to something low-risk but high-impact:
Let them run your team-building.
You don’t need to disappear. You need to shift from “star of the show” to “director.”
Step one: give them the menu.
Share a handful of simple activities: icebreakers, communication games, trust challenges, quick reflection prompts.
Walk them through:
how the activity works
what skill it’s secretly teaching
how to debrief it afterward
Then tell them, “Pick one for Thursday. You’re running it.”
Step two: let it be messy.
They’ll talk too fast. They’ll forget instructions. Someone will crack the wrong joke.
Perfect.
That’s them learning how to command a room.
When it’s over, huddle with the captains, not the whole team:
“What felt awkward?”
“Where did you lose them?”
“What would you change next time?”
Now your captains aren’t just “leaders” by title. They’re leaders by rep count.
Step three: connect it to games.
After a while, you’ll notice certain captains are good at different things:
One is great at hyping people up.
One is great at explaining.
One is great at calming chaos.
In a timeout or huddle, you can say:
“You take the energy. You take the reminders. You pull aside our guy who’s melting down.”
You’re building an on-field leadership unit, not just hoping someone magically becomes vocal under pressure.
Step four: get out of their way occasionally.
Once they’ve had a few reps leading activities, here’s a fun reset:
Tell your team, “For the next 10 minutes, I am invisible. Captains, practice is yours. Get them connected and ready.”
Then stand on the side, arms crossed, and shut up.
You’ll learn a lot about your culture by what happens next.
Leadership is not a speech you give in August.
It’s a muscle you build by giving kids actual responsibility and letting them succeed or struggle in front of their peers.
Activities are a perfect sandbox for that.
Let your captains run the room now, so when the real pressure hits, it’s not their first time leading.
