Your Voice Sets the Temperature
You don’t just give a pregame speech.
You set the temperature in the room.
Walk into a locker room 20 minutes before kickoff and you can feel it in the air. Sometimes it’s buzzing—guys bouncing off the walls, helmets banging, music blasting. Other times it’s tight—quiet, tense, everyone stuck in their own head.
In both cases, your voice is the thermostat.
One of the biggest mistakes I see coaches make is using the same tone every game. Same volume, same pacing, same “let’s go!” regardless of what the team actually needs. It’s like trying to fix everything with duct tape: sometimes it works, sometimes you’re just making a sticky mess.
There are two main “gears” you need as a coach: calm confidence and fired-up intensity.
Calm confidence is what you use when the stakes are already high and the players are buzzing. Playoffs. Rivalry games. Big crowds. Their adrenaline is already spiking. If you jump in screaming like you just chugged three energy drinks, you push them over the edge. Too amped turns into sloppy.
Calm confidence sounds like this:
“We’ve prepared for this. We’ve done the work. Trust the plan. Trust each other. We don’t need magic tonight, we just need us.”
You’re the anchor. Your voice is steady, grounded. You’re not adding fuel to a bonfire—you’re giving it shape so it doesn’t burn out of control.
Then there’s fired-up intensity.
You use that when the energy is flat. Long season. Tough week at school. Maybe you’re playing a team your kids assume they’ll beat. That’s when your job is to light the match.
Fired-up intensity isn’t just yelling louder. It’s urgency with purpose:
“This is our field. Our standard. Our name on that jersey. They don’t get anything easy tonight. We decide the tempo from the first whistle.”
You move more. You punch your words. You remind them why this matters, not just that it matters.
The skill is knowing which gear to use.
You don’t figure that out in front of the team—you figure it out by paying attention all week. How did practice feel? What’s the mood in the locker room during taping? Who looks nervous? Who looks half-asleep? Your speech should be a response to what you see, not a performance you give out of habit.
Sometimes the magic is in blending both.
Start calm:
“Look around. You belong here. You’ve earned this.”
Then build:
“Now it’s time to cash in the work. We play fast, we play physical, and we don’t back down. This is our night.”
Calm to fire. Anchor to ignition.
Here’s a simple pregame check for you as a coach:
If they’re jittery: slow your voice, lower your volume, sharpen the message.
If they’re dead: increase your energy, shorten your sentences, raise the urgency.
Different games. Same team. Different temperature needs.
Your players don’t need a TED Talk. They need a clear message, delivered in the emotional climate that helps them play their best. When you learn to read the room and choose your tone on purpose, your voice stops being noise and starts being a weapon.
You’re not just talking before the game.
You’re setting the temperature.
