I’ve started to question why I coach. The questions came not from any lack of enjoyment but from the constant confusion and shock people seem to experience when they realize I coach 3 flag football teams in different age groups. The most common presumption of reason is, “Oh you must do it so you can control practice schedules.” but that never crossed my mind when I started. I just believed that I could put my kids in the best possible position to succeed. The more I coached, the more I realized I like the chess match and the chance to do what I wanted to do for my kids for all the kids on the roster.
What bothers me about the role is that there are so many guys who aren’t in it for the teaching and the strategy. They are in coaching in order to win and feel good about beating other people. I coached against a pair of those guys today, and it was clear that one was very devastated he couldn’t get his 4-5 year old players to do what they needed win the game while the other was angry with his team for not being very team-like in the way they played.
Both these situations sprang from the same source: Coaching. Both problems are more about the coaches not being able to motivate players and not staying where they are supposed to be on the field.
Coaching gives me a huge rush. I get to watch my kids grow into team-players and get to watch them work as hard as they ca in order to present the coming results.