Uh-hmmm, Coaches

Current mood: disappointed

Gotta love coaches. They are a necessary part of any organized youth sport. I try, as a parent who will likely NEVER coach any sport (because I can't stand parents), to be understanding. Now I question my understandingness.

I've let a few coaches know, in my day, just how I felt. I've unloaded on them, discussed intelligently with them, suggested to them and any other host of things to and with them regarding my kids and their sports. I do appreciate coaches. Most of the time they are volunteers, and that is a very good thing.

But maybe, just maybe, they are coaching for the wrong reason. Maybe they are coaching because they want their kid to be a star. That is a wrong reason to coach. Maybe they are coaching because they want to win. Eh, wrong answer. Maybe they are coaching because they want to win to make themselves feel like big men. Ummm, double wrong. Maybe they are coaching because those volunteer hours are adding up as a part of a class or community service project. While not entirely wrong, that can still be a wrong reason for a volunteer coach to take a coaching position.

Ladies and gentlemen, can we all agree that the main and best reason to volunteer to coach a sport is to bring your love (and if you don't love it, you probably can't convey love for it) of that sport to young people? Also acceptable reasoning is that you feel a need to be involved in children's lives to make them richer human beings. You have to love coaching to coach. Hands down, no exceptions.

So Mr. Nolan is in flag football right now. It is a chance for the kids to get ready for pre-conditioning for the regular football season, which begins practicing in about two months. The rules of flag are different from tackle. Some of it doesn't make sense to me, but I can hang with it.

Up until this week, he was having a blast. Andrew and Jared, two of his closest buddies, are on the team with him. Mason is there too, who was one of the standouts from the tackle season last year. Derek is also on the team, and he practiced and played in the end of the year tournament with our boys. So, these boys love each other and know each other. Youth Services placed them together because of their familiarity with one another.

Our age bracket (10-15) also has two other teams, obviously hand-picked by their coaches. I don't so much have a hard time with that. I get that. One team seems to be kids from the Sergeants Major Academy families, and I am 99% sure their coach is in the Academy. Now, the problem I do have with the bracket is that one of the teams is made up, almost exclusively, of boys who are fourteen or fifteen years old. OK, not a big deal, until you consider that the median age for the other two teams is probably twelve. Their median age has got to be fourteen. Their voices have changed. Their shoulders are broad. And, I think I saw them sharing a six pack of beer after the first time they, ah-hem, beat (more like decimated) us.
We played that team last night for the second time. We don't have to drive the outcome home. But, our boys showed up ready to win. They believed they could, and that is the most important thing in the equation, right?

One of our boys said, "Hey Coach! We're gonna win." and the coach replied, "No, we aren't." (can you hear me using swear words I didn't know I knew?)

Last week that coach's wife said, "My husband feels like he got the team of leftovers." The very same coach.

Now, we bring our kids to practice to learn from you. We instill trust in you that you can bring out the best in our boys. We are confident you will teach them athleticism and sportsmanlike conduct. And we should be able, at all times, to think that way.

And then you open your mouth.

Let me just say, if you make a kid believe he can do anything, he can. The trick is knowing how to make him believe.