Pearls: Coaching days

EDITORIAL MUG: Matt Pearl

I have attended several high school basketball games in the area since the season began a couple of weeks ago. During one of those contests, I said to myself, ‘ I can’t believe I haven’t coached one of these in over 15 years.’ It seems like yesterday in some ways – but in another real way, it’s like that happened in a different lifetime.

I didn’t have any children when I walked off the floor, and now I have a handful. I hadn’t been married for a full year when I stopped coaching high school basketball, and now we’re on year 17. I went home to an apartment the night after that Sectional round loss, and now we have a home of our own.

I was in my early 30s, and now it’s late 40s. For that reason alone, I’m really not sure I could ever do it again.

Years back, I wrote an editorial that probably focused too closely upon the negatives associated with coaching: the hours, the lows, dealing with difficult people, etc. Those factors remain in my mind, although my stance has softened on a few of them.

People, for example, have always been difficult. I’m probably difficult for some folks to tolerate. I have dealt with so many more folks in my post-coaching days, I think I could actually handle that part better.

I think what could constitute a difficult adjustment for me, were I ever thrust back into the coaching scene again, would be changes in societal expectations – particularly regarding authority and obligation.

If you’re going to win as a coach, then you must have a high level of obedience and conformity from your players. Coaching kids who don’t expect to have demands placed upon them would be frustrating. Coaching kids whose parents also don’t expect their children to have demands put upon them would be downright maddening.

But there’s an aspect to success that so many folks misunderstand, one that made the apprenticeship model a professional mainstay for hundreds of years. When a young person trains with an older, more experienced worker in anything, the younger person continually becomes more experienced, and the older becomes a more effective teacher.

For this to happen, though, there have to be moments when the teacher (coach) exercises authority. You blow the whistle, make your demands, then condition players to put down their self-willed tendencies and exchange them for what best benefits the team. Players give, and then they take. The better givers they are, the richer the experience they take from playing sports.

But honestly, in what aspect of life is this not true? Don’t we receive more when we have given more? In this way, I will reiterate the major theme of my Sports Scene column, a piece I wrote for nearly two decades: if sports aren’t teaching us lessons about real life, then what good are they?

So as I consider these points I am trying to articulate, perhaps I should concede that I might indeed be able to overcome the challenges of human dynamics in regard to coaching. In turn, however, I cannot remove the aspect of time that coaching demands.

Time has in the past 16 years become my most valued commodity. In 2010, I looked forward in time to having a family – I was married, but we wanted kids, a house, a yard, etc. It was the possibility that those children would enter our lives in the near future from that point that helped to compel me to re-prioritize my time. No regrets.

I do, however maintain a high level of respect for folks who are out there coaching on late basketball nights. They give and give, and some seasons it seems like what little bit they receive gets swallowed up in angry parent communications and unfavorable finishes on the scoreboard. When you win, it’s because ‘Anybody could win with those kids,’ and when you lose, ‘It’s because my kid barely saw the floor tonight.’ But for all of you exhausted coaches, I’ll tell you this from experience:

You are making a difference. You are helping to safeguard one of the final true, fair arenas of competition remaining in our society. Hold the line, do what is right, keep your integrity and make the most of it. You really will miss it someday.

Matt Pearl owns and operates The Tri-County Ledger.