The Pitch as the Classroom: What Does the World Cup Teach Us About Learning?

In just a handful of days, the World Cup will be coming to the United States. Soccer teams from all over the globe will descend on North America to compete in the most watched sporting event on Earth. As a high school soccer coach, I am excited for the opportunity to watch the matches happening in cities and stadiums I know–even if the organizing body (FIFA) has priced tickets so high they’re out of reach for the average public school teachers to attend in person.

Still, as the excitement builds, I’ve been thinking about how much teaching and coaching are one and the same. The longer I spend in both professions, the more I realize that the best teachers and the best coaches are actually doing the exact same work. Our jobs are about building confidence and competence so that students and athletes can perform at their highest level when the pressure is the greatest.

As a high school math teacher, my students are required to take the classes I teach. Everyone graduates from high school with some understanding of mathematics. Much like math, most kids grow up with a basic understanding of how soccer (or football) is played–even in a country like ours that is about as un-fanatical about soccer as possible. Math, like soccer, is a global language; it transcends cultural, linguistic, and geographic boundaries. Just about everyone in America–and worldwide–knows something about two of my biggest passions - math and soccer. 

Both of these subjects suffer from a similar misconception. People think success comes from raw talent alone. In reality, as teachers and coaches know so well, success usually stems from preparation, repetition, and belief.

When I coach soccer, I frequently explain to my high school boys how sports prepare them for success in the other parts of their lives. Just like most of my players won’t become World Cup stars, most of my students won’t become mathematicians. But the priorities remain the same–teaching kids how to think, prepare, and persevere when things get difficult.

Every day before practice my players do the same fifteen-minute warmup routine to prepare for the day's training session. They jog, they stretch, and they start easing into touching the soccer ball through simple physical movements that they've done thousands of times previously. This gets their bodies physically prepared for the workout but it also mentally cues their bodies into the session. The warmup tells the body and mind that it is time to focus. It creates consistency.

This mirrors, almost exactly, the practice of warmups in the classroom. Students enter our classrooms possibly a bit dysregulated and they need to get focused and prepared to learn.  Jumping immediately into a lesson seldom works well. So teachers have the students start with a simple exercise that they’ve done many, many times previously. The initial warmup phase is just as important mentally both for a physical workout as it is for the mental calisthenics of a classroom. It lets athletes and students settle in mentally before the heavy lifting begins.

Another aspect of coaching that mirrors the classroom is the preparation needed to perform well on big games and tests. This is most evident in my AP classes, as we prepare all year for a single high-stakes test that encompasses the entire curriculum. In many ways, it resembles preparing for a championship game–or a World Cup. There is pressure, anticipation, anxiety, and the understanding that everything you worked for will be tested in a very public way, with no do overs. 

And, not coincidentally, some of the highest performers on these standardized tests are also the best athletes. I have been lucky enough to coach in a number of state championship games and one thing becomes clear very quickly in those high pressure moments: talent matters, but emotional control matters more.

I work hard with my soccer players to mentally prepare for the enormity of those big moments. We actively work on managing one’s emotions and how to calm the ‘butterflies’. This translates directly to the classroom for these players, as they can use the same strategies to prepare mentally for high performance on big assessments. Pressure isn’t the enemy; panic is.

A difficult test can feel like a World Cup match to a teenager. The AP Calculus exam might not exactly be equal to taking a penalty shootout goal in front of millions of viewers, but the emotional experience is surprisingly similar. Your heart races. Your thoughts speed up. With the right preparation, students and athletes can maintain their composure in both these settings.

This summer, the world will be watching the World Cup on North American soil for the first time in more than three decades. There will be moments of brilliance, when the players do what they do at the very top of their profession. And there will be moments of failure, when even these highly-tuned professional athletes crack under the pressure. That is the beauty–and heartbreak–of sports. But these players have arrived at this pinnacle of their sports career, prepared mentally and physically for the competition, because of the lessons they learned from their coaches AND their teachers throughout their lifetime, long before the cameras arrived.

Ultimately, our jobs are not just about teaching math or coaching soccer skills. The real work is helping young people prepare to rise to important moments with confidence and resilience–whether that happens under the fluorescent lights of an AP exam room or the stadium lights of a World Cup game.

Scott Zipke is the co-president of Hopkinton Education Association. He has been a math teacher for 23 years and a soccer coach for 20 years. His teams have participated in 16 Final Fours, 9 state championship games, and won 7 state championships. Scott is a two-time New Hampshire Coach of the Year.