The Coin-Toss

Thinking Beyond the Box

Oct 8

Many years ago when I was teaching/in grad school/coaching VB at Iowa State, I knew a woman named Paula Porter who was part of the English grad program there as well. For better or worse, we share a sense of humor and a preference for directness rather than lies or what is now considered 'political correctness'.

Paula's husband had died several years prior, a victim of cancer caused by Agent Orange during his Vietnam tour of duty. While at State, she became friends with a gentleman who lived in Boston. That led to letters, phone calls, coordinating weekends to be together--and they found through all of that, they actually did love one another. There's a problem here--Paula had a career established already in the Midwest (journal editor, writer, teacher) while Dennis had his work in Boston. For it all to work out, someone was going to have to sacrifice their current career for the sake of the relationship--this is before there was a world-wide-web or the ability to do most jobs from home.

We were playing intramural softball when the subject of what to do came up. Being my snarky self, I immediately suggested "Just toss a coin. Head's he moves here, tails you go there." Paula gave me this side-eye look back, thought about it and said, "I think we'll do that." Indeed they did and when she finished her degree, she moved to Boston and eventually they moved to Florida.

That's where this starts--context.

But after that, the coin toss stuck with me as an arbitrary way to make decisions--like Batman's Two Face, I suppose...except I realized something when I tried to make a decision for myself by flipping a coin. The minute the coin went airborne, I found myself rooting for one side to 'win' or when a side landed on the ground, I'd immediately go 'Let's do this two-out-of-three, instead.'

See why the coin toss works? Because when push comes to shove, we know what we'd like and we are unhappy with leaving our life to chance rather than exerting control/preferences when given the opportunity.

So I've used the coin-toss to help advise young people on their choices. Should I play in college? Heads = yes, tails = no. You get the idea. I don't think many people ever actually toss the coin because they realize before that point what they want.

This all came out after I gave a talk at a coaching clinic. I talked with one of the people who ran it--her daughter graduated in 2018 and I'd talked with 'mom' then about her decision-process (as a 36 ACT kid, she wasn't coming to a Juco) and that her daughter was struggling with deciding on a school, so I mentioned the coin-toss, talked a while longer, then went on my way. The first I've seen her since then was Saturday. I mentioned the coin-toss and her eyes went wide: "YOU!!! You're the one who mentioned that to me long ago"--and explained they'd actually used it with her college decision and that it had been so useful framing the question, that 'Mom' and the daughter used it regularly when trying to sort out tough questions--TOTALLY stoked my ego.

(Of note, the daughter chose Tufts, played in a D3 Elite Eight, and is now at a prestigious law school...she chose...wisely.)

So on my drive back from Peoria, I started thinking about why the coin-toss works as a decision-making framework and came up with something else besides what's been noted above.

With young people, they HATE making decisions, partially because lawnmower parents do everything for them, so they get no practice making them, but also because they are young--and adolescents WANT to please adults/people in superior positions. It's part of brain development. Unfortunately with many decisions, you have to say 'no' at some point. They fear saying 'no' because sometimes adults get angry hearing that--certainly within a family bad things happen when a parent says to do something and the child says 'no'.

So--to help our athletes, what can we do to help get past the aversion to saying 'no' or 'no thanks'? I think it goes beyond general self-esteem and confidence because I don't know *ANY* teenagers who don't get nervous saying 'no'. Instead--their fear leads them to ghosting coaches/adults with behavior that is rude or poor etiquette--and NEVER blame this on kids...adults now do the same damned thing, choosing to ignore people rather than communicate/say no.

Consider the coin-toss for yourself with decisions. Who starts as my OH1? Which of these two drills do we finish practice with? Do I accept a different job offer? You aren't guaranteed a 'right' decision--but you are guaranteed to get the decision you think is best in that moment.