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| "Good day, men. Good day to work." |
I've coached youth sports, but am
officially…retired. I coached 4-5 YMCA basketball teams, three Little League
teams, and two flag football teams. Ages from about 5 to 11.
I’m done, I’m out. I feel like I’ve had enough for reasons
you’ll see. But ultimately, I’m happy. It takes a lot out of you, but it puts a
lot into you as well.
I can tell you this right from the jump, and I’m sure it
comes as no surprise: 100% of the kids are great and 90% of the adults are
great.
Yes, Fortnite dances have wrecked havoc with attention spans
over the last year or two.
I’ll tell you this: If you are a youth sports coach, you are
not just a coach; you are also Lost and Found.
I’ll tell you this: If you are a youth sports coach, you are
not just a coach; you are also Julie the cruise director from the Love Boat.
I’ll tell you this: If you are a youth sports coach, you are
not just a coach; you are also expected to be Master of Schedules (and the one
to blame when parents don’t like the schedule).
If you are a youth sports coach, you are not just a coach;
you are a bathroom monitor. No matter HOW many times you beg those kids to go
pee before the game, you’ll have a shortstop who has to run off the field and
pee in the 6th inning.
Getting back to those 90% of adults, two quotes will stay
with me forever. One parent in Little League told me “I’ve made a lot of
friends here…and a few enemies.”
I found that experience to be true. And it pains me, and
maybe it should pain you, that it happens. Yes, Virginia, every damn story
you’ve heard is true. There are parents who speak out of both sides of their
mouth, and take this WAY too seriously.
The second quote speaks directly to that: “It’s all about
the kids.” I don’t know WHY, but in my experience, this was a-hole code. The
guy who said “It’s all about the kids” was UNDOUBTEDLY going to be the biggest
jerk in the league.
Explicitly and for the record: I’ve seen adults F-bomb each
other over if their team is going to be the White Sox or the Diamondbacks or
whatever.
Explicitly and for the record: I’ve seen coaches try to
TRADE their team name (“Hey, you wanna be the D-Backs?”) for a PLAYER on
another team. Yes, turning 9-year-old kids into commodities swapped for laundry.
Explicitly and for the record: I have been F-bombed and had
objects thrown at me by other coaches on a field of play. You swallow hard, but
I never took the bait.
I’ve been in the middle of drafts—YES, drafts for 8-year-old
kids—with adults F-bombing each other over player ratings and if they were
getting screwed or not because a coach’s kid was ranked too high.
I distinctly remember one F-bombing fit over (really) team
names. I walked in on the middle of a conversation to hear a league
administrator say to a coach…
“Here’s the hierarchy: We have the administration, then we
have the volunteers, then we have everyone else. You’re everyone else.”
I said, “Hey, I’m a volunteer coach. What’s that make me?”
He had no answer.
These things are all true. And this is a scratch of the
surface. You wanna hear the REAL stories of Adults Acting Badly at 10-year-old
sporting events? Ask the refs and umpires.
So look, there’s some bad. As can be said for many things in
life.
And as I prepped this missive, I realized something. It’s
not new. I have distant memories of playing T-ball, freaking T-ball, in 1975,
and hearing the parents whisper about the league commissioner who always
happened to coach the most stacked team in the league as well.
Freaking T-ball. 1975.
And here’s a crazy rub: Youth sports desperately need
coaches, for a job that’s time-consuming, occasionally soul-sucking, largely
thankless, and did I mention time-consuming?
I’ve been called by sports leagues coyly asking, “Hey is
your kid playing this season? And if so, maybe you’d like to coach?”
I’ve also had leagues call and just flat-out ask me to
please please please please coach, regardless if my kid is playing or not (!) because
they need coaches badly.
Are they calling me because I’m some great coach? Some
pillar of civic virtue? Hell no. I’m a warm body who’s done it before and never
gone Roy Turner on a kid. Those are my qualifications.
But now, I’m out. I limped to the finish line. I just
finished a season with a jacked-up hip and shoulder, doing 2-3 physical therapy
appointments a week while coaching. I’m happy to bid this goodbye.
Yes, I said “happy,” and I mean that in every sense of the
word.
The main driving force was my kid. He’s 10, and he just
feels done with team sports for now.
Please make NO mistake: 10-year-olds are WAY smarter than we
typically give them credit for. He sees everything I’ve mentioned so far.
And I told myself I was NEVER going to be the parent who
forced their kid into activities they didn’t want to do.
I told my kid, too. I desperately want him to find what he’s
passionate about and pursue it—music, theater, art, back into sports, whatever.
But I’m not going to force anything on him.
Find a passion, kid. Fortnite seems to be winning right now.
And yeah, “happy” in every sense of the word. Because I’ll
tell you this:
I felt a lot of sting in the moment, sometimes from a tough
loss, sometimes from a chappy parent. But now, all I feel is the good. The bad
has lost its sting.
I distinctly remember starting a Little League season 0-3
once, wondering if we were ever going to win a game. I felt so badly for the
kids, like I was letting them down. Thank the gods and Abner Doubleday that we
won our next game, ’cause I was almost ready to jump off a bridge.
And if I’m being 100% honest, I’ll tell you I’ve wrestled
mightily with my own motivations. Was I REALLY feeling bad for the kids? Or was
I doing this all for my own self-aggrandizement?
I’d like to think it was 100% the former, but I don’t know.
Maybe I’m a symptom of a problem myself.
So look, I’ll say it again: I lived all the good and the bad
in the moment, but all I remember is the good. The bad has lost its sting.
I have trinkets. Every now and then I’ll reach into the
cupboard for a glass and pull out an engraved mug the parents got me at the end
of a Little League season. Makes me smile every time, and sometimes damn near
cry.
I have memories. I coached a 7-8 year old basketball team
once, and we had a tiny, tiny little 7-year-old girl on the team who just flat
out lacked the strength to even come close to making a shot, even on an 8-foot
hoop.
And the end of our first practice, I put her up on my
shoulders so she could score. Her mom came running over to me after, tears in
her eyes, crying about how happy her daughter was that she finally made a
basket.
So we ended every practice that way. Little girl gets to
score, we all go out on a high note.
Cliché as it sounds, I think my favorite memories will
always be helping those “bottom of the roster” kids move up and move along.
We had a baseball player who barely knew which end of the
bat to hold on Day One, but when he hit a legit triple (which turned into a
Little League home run when he ran through my stop sign at third) against a
first-place team, well…you rarely see greater joy than a kid’s face turning
third an heading into home like that.
Seriously, the best was watching the kid who was tripping over
his own feet on the first day of practice develop a love of a game or a kid who
couldn’t even grip a football suddenly “get it.”
Another parent, a really good guy, told me something else:
“You’re approaching the end of your ability to help them.” Yeah, as my son
moves from 5th grade to 6th, it’s largely the schools
going forward.
And I’ll go forward with him, into whatever he wants. Just
not as a coach anymore.
The feeling is bittersweet, but way more sweet than bitter.
I’ve had first place and last place teams, but again, the
sting is gone and the good remains. I know there are more important things than
a won/lost record. And I comforted myself with that thought last season. It was
also a last-place season.
Am I a saint? Hell no. It will likely take me a few more
years and the bottom of a bottle to truly figure out if I did this out of some
kindness of the heart or for my own puffery. Maybe it’s some combination of the
two.
But at 51creaking years old, and with some torn knee
cartilage and thoracic outlet syndrome, I’m happy to sunset.
I CAN tell you with all certainty and no hesitation: I love
every one of the kids I ever coached. Again, 100% of the kids are great. The
moments I spent with them were magic.
I love you kids. Just please, go pee before the game starts.
Thank you for listening to my it’s-not-a-Ted-Talk on
#YouthSports.
