Maybe we should give them a chance?
FOUL BALLS
I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I would absolutely hate to be a coach of anything, whether it was a life coach, one of those coaches that rides around the city, or a sports coach. The stress seems terrible.
I’ve talked to coaches a fair bit in the nearly two years of doing this job now, from new coaches who are excited to be given a chance to shape a program, all the way down to cynical, jaded coaches who are just ready to retire.
See, I thought when I started working as the sports reporter that it would be managing the students themselves that would be the hard part. But the longer I’ve been here, the more I’ve realized how wrong I was to assume that.
See, while every sport and every team has different problems to address, I can’t think of a single coach who hasn’t mentioned how stressful it is dealing with parents and managing their expectations and criticism.
The strangest part, though, is why people are way more fine telling the football coach that he’s doing his job wrong, but they don’t go up to their child’s math or science teacher and tell them that they’re teaching wrong.
“You’re running the wrong offensive scheme” is something people seem perfectly fine hearing, while if someone tried to complain that a teacher was teaching the periodic table wrong, then they’d be laughed out of the room, down the street, and into the loony bin.
The only explanation I’ve been able to come up with so far is that people think they understand sports better than complex equations, even with a similar level of competency. How many guys do you know who haven’t played football for 20 years but have strong opinions about why the team is doing everything wrong?
With the many new coaches who have started within the county this year, it seems especially important now that they’re given the space tobuild their individual programs with the vision and abilities that they were hired for, rather than trying to conform to some amalgamated idea pulling them in a dozen different directions.
Everyone understands: You want your kid to have a good experience. Everyone wants their kids to be successful and win and be rewarded for their talents – but they should also be taught to give people a chance, even, and maybe especially, when things aren’t going their best. If every couple years a coach gets thrown out because they’re not going 8-2, what does that teach the students that see it? Probably not the lesson most parents would want them to absorb.
Everyone can enjoy being on and supporting a winning team. It takes a lot of courage and a lot of drive to believe in teams and coaches that are trying to find their footing and build themselves up. It takes a lot of courage for a coach to believe in their team and their community their first year. The least the community can do is be brave enough to give them a chance.