Sometimes I wonder what is worse.  Being a coach or being a referee.

Then I come to my senses knowing being a referee is way worse because you only tolerate (not like) them when your team has won.  And even that can be debatable.

In the last couple months though, I’ve really had to reflect about what it means to be a coach.  I see a lot of parents who step up and volunteer their time to be coaches for their kids’ teams.  I also see people get hired at schools into a job description that we call a “coach.”

Does that mean one is better than the other?

I don’t necessarily know the answer to that.  I do think though that being a coach can be very difficult, but as I thought about this I feel there is one thing that is the absolute toughest of all.

And it is not dealing with the parents.  Even though that could be a close second.

I feel the toughest thing about coaching is developing the ability to actually teach these kids something and have them apply it.  

In this day and age, with oversensitive kids and parents, everybody needs to be a winner, etc., it really is a wonder if a coach can coach something to a kid that is meaningful.  

Anybody can learn drills and have kids run through them.  It takes a coach to convey to those athletes why we do these drills and why they will be important to that athlete.  Are we learning something here doing these drills or are we just having kids go through the motions to break a sweat?

I want my athletes to not just run them through drills, but start impressing upon them about a lot of the methodology behind what we do.  I want them to understand why as an athlete we have you start with a warmup, go through the workout, and end with a cooldown.

We need to get these athletes to understand that if they want to get to a higher level, whatever that may be, they need to expect more out of us as coaches, but more out of themselves as well.  They can’t cut corners.  They need to dot their “I’s” and cross their “T’s”.  

We need to get them to understand exactly what it feels like to work at 100%.  They need to be able to correlate that hard work into some type of success so it makes it easier to say, “if we do X, then Y will be the outcome.”

But, every kid is different and each kid may respond differently to the exact same phrasing of a statement.  As a coach, I need to be able to get inside my athlete’s head and figure out what will make him/her tick.  What is the reasoning behind the perceived “laziness” and how can I get them to respond in the way that I want without crushing their spirit?

That my friends is the toughest thing about coaching.

That is something that my coaches really want to focus on.  As we grow as coaches, we want to make sure we are developing athletes that go back to their teams and really impress their coaches.  But, ultimately we want to develop athletes that will really make you, mom and dad, SUPER PROUD!!

Photo courtesy of Popofatticus on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/barretthall/