People often ask me, “What made you want to become a teacher?” There is a lot to that question, but a big part of it was so that it would be easier to be a coach. But that just raises another question: why be a coach? Why do coaches do this to ourselves? It is Valentine’s Day night, a night on which almost everyone I know has made plans of some sort, even if it is a singles thing. Yet, as a head coach, I am worrying about Field Day tomorrow and our first scrimmage of the season, pouring over my roster, making sure my paperwork is all taken care of, debating groupings of players, and wishing that we had not lost Wednesday’s practice. So what makes a person prioritize a sport that they don’t even typically play anymore over their personal life? What makes us invest days of our own time? And tons of our own money?
So I sat. And I thought. And I pondered. And synonyms to make me sound smart. And I had a beer. And came up with this:
It fuels our inherent competitive nature.
Along with several other people who I have had the pleasure to be coached by, my high school football coach, Karl Buckwalter, has been a huge influence on my life. One day at practice, he said something that perfectly illustrated the way I feel about winning: “I don’t care if it is football or tiddlywinks; I want to win everything. If my mom is going up for the last point in a game of 1 on 1, I would cut her legs out.” While paraphrased and obviously used as hyperbole, that is absolutely the best way to describe how competitive I am. Anyone who has ever been unfortunate enough to play a board game against me can likely attest to this, as can four years of rugby players at my school. As I have reflected on my athletic career, I begun to realize that I am not all that fast, strong, big, or naturally talented; any personal success that I have had as an athlete and member of a team has been almost solely due to my desire to win and soak in every possible ounce of technique; to try to be great, even when that was out of my reach. Coaching has allowed me to demonstrate and encourage a desire to be great in the kids that I am around, even though I hope most of them do a better job than me of not being overly competitive.
You see the kids differently.
Many of the kids whom I have coached during various rugby and football seasons have troubles in the classroom. However, it is rare that I see those same issues when we are out on the field. In many ways, an athletic practice is many things that a perfect lesson would be; it is constantly engaging, everyone gets attention in turn and participates, the coach never talks for more than about five minutes, and individual help is typically available. There is one key difference that keeps these kids coming back: they chose to be a member of the team. Kids don’t choose to go to school every day and, if given the choice, many would opt out of most of their education. Part of being a teenager is not necessarily being able to see the benefits of education, yet a sport allows these young men and women to see almost immediate gains and results. An increase in the weight you can lift, boosted endurance, a positive change in physical appearance, or victories in competitions are all more tangible and important to an athlete than the number that represents their grade in a class. Coaching gives the opportunity to see kids that may be knuckleheads in a classroom work towards something they are passionate about; it is hard to argue that there is anything more exciting than seeing someone living out their passion.
We love these kids.
On average, a student that we teach for a full school year will be with us for a maximum (no absences or extended time out of the classroom) of about 135 hours (90 days seeing the student for a block of an hour and a half). Compare that to about 150 hours which the rugby players will spend with me this season alone (about three hours a practice, three times a week for 14 weeks, plus at least six game days). This will be my fourth year coaching, which means the players who have been with me for four years will have spent somewhere between 500 and 600 hours with me, assuming they ONLY played rugby. The bond that this creates cannot be overstated – there is a reason that I regularly call one of my four year players my “son.” No matter how my day went teaching, I get to start over with these kids for practice. When I have a bad day, it is inevitable that we will have one of the best practices in weeks and I will head home wondering what was so wrong earlier. I have been lucky enough to hug every senior after the last game of their season and tell them that I was proud of them and (sappy as it is) that I love them. When I was engaged last year, I was not sure if I would be able to continue working at my school after this year. If I ended up teaching at another school next year, the thing I would miss most by far would be coaching these young men (and now, women).
We needed to be coached too.
This is the most important of all my points. I will be the first to tell you that if I had not played football and run track in high school, then I would not have graduated. Not a chance in the world. Without sports, school had almost no meaning to me at that age. A remarkable number of the coaches that I have spoken to about this topic have voiced similar opinions. We went to school because you had to be there to practice. We passed classes because there was a minimum GPA requirement to play in games. We were respectful (usually) and paid attention (sometimes) because our coaches, some of the people we respected most in the world, told us to. Without Karl Buckwalter, Tori Arther, Allen Baskin, and several other coaches, I would not have made it through high school or the death of my younger brother my senior year. When I had to be strong for everyone else, these are people who saw me weak. When I thought it was OK to switch to lazy, these are the people who gave me a swift kick in the rear. When I was ready to quit, these are the people who showed me what it meant to push through adversity. When I think about my greatest influences in my life, these are the people who I think of.
Scrumming with Shakespeare 