Tonight I was faced with the question: What makes you happy. I really had to consider what role being a coach plays into that. I’ve been fortunate enough to coach multiple youth teams over the years both as an assistant and a head coach. I guess you could say I have skin in the game now. I started doing it largely out of a egotistical need to have some control over the kind of coaching my kids were getting. In other words, I started doing it like every other dad did. Once my good friend wasn’t able to coach my boys I took over and ran the show. After a while it became about the group of kids we pulled together and kept together. Yeah, there was still ego involved.
This summer I stepped away from coaching and put my kids on squad where the coaches have more dedication and spend more time than I do on task. The results were excellent–we’ve won every game at the 5th-6th grade level and won or tied all of the 1st-2nd grade games. The winning isn’t the point though. The desire to be out there and helping is pretty strong. It made me happy to recognize that FB season is near and I’ll be able to be on the sideline again. But why so happy?
I don’t know. It isn’t about the ego nearly as much as it used to be. Its largely about being there for the experience and getting to watch the kids feel successful or even not so successful. My feelings about being a coach are merging with my feelings about being a dad in order to become something entirely great.
So, does that mean I step away from coaching and be a dad on the sidelines? Maybe. I can’t be certain what I’ll do after the season. I do recognize that I love being a dad and involved and I love being a coach separate from that. A lot to think on.
Some Thoughts:
- Since I stopped sharing these posts with Facebook (as part of that brief period during which I tried to escape the book) my readership has dropped to 1. I’m pretty sure that is a referendum on the power of social media.