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The 30-second answer
Do not guess from the sideline and do not try to fix fatigue with an iron pill, energy drink, or harder effort. Fatigue and performance decline can have many causes. A coach should notice the pattern, fix obvious team-access problems, document observable changes, and privately involve the family and appropriate health professional.
What to do next
- 1
Document only observable participation or performance changes through the school-approved channel.
- 2
Check breakfast access, lunch timing, pre-practice food, recovery access, sleep opportunity, recent illness, and training changes without policing intake.
- 3
Speak privately with the family and follow the school’s athletic-training or medical-referral process.
- 4
If bone pain or a stress injury is suspected, stop impact activity and route the athlete to the athletic trainer or appropriate medical evaluation under school policy before return.
Observable changes worth sharing
- A clear drop in training tolerance, performance, or recovery from the same workload.
- Frequent illness, repeated injury, reported bone pain, dizziness, fainting, or repeated inability to participate.
- Private disclosures about restriction, weight loss, poor growth, or missed or increasingly irregular periods are referral signals, not information for a coach to investigate.
What a coach can say
“I have noticed that the same workload is looking much harder and recovery seems slower. I cannot tell you the cause or interpret lab results. I wanted to share the pattern so you can discuss it with your pediatrician or sports-medicine clinician. I can also help fix any school-day food-access problems.”
What to avoid
- Do not weigh athletes or collect food, symptom, menstrual, or lab-result diaries.
- Do not interpret ferritin or recommend iron.
- Do not treat fatigue as a character or motivation problem.
When general guidance stops
Persistent decline, repeated illness or injury, bone pain, suspected stress injury, dizziness, fainting, restrictive eating, weight loss, or poor growth needs family involvement and qualified medical evaluation. The ordering clinician interprets any laboratory result.
Urgent boundary
Collapse, fainting, confusion, chest symptoms, severe breathing trouble, or suspected exertional heat stroke requires immediate emergency-action-plan activation and EMS involvement.
Use the matching resource
These open the complete public handout or released tool. There is no email gate.
Sources
For the whole school season
Want this built into the week? See Program Access.
Open the week, review the parent message, send it through your school channel, give the two-minute team talk, and share the matching resource. Families join privately with your program code; Aspire never messages families for you.
Individualized assessment, diagnosis, and 1:1 treatment are separate from Program Access.
See exactly what the school gets