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Transforming Coaches

October 12, 2012

Forty-two years ago this past August, I showed up at a high school near Milwaukee for my first teaching and coaching job.  I remember being introduced to the football team just before the first practice, and then just 60 minutes later, on the field, I heard a player call me “coach.”

The next day I overheard one player say to another, “Coach Roberts said . . .”

In 24 hours, I had been transformed from Jack Roberts to Coach Roberts.  And it gave me a very special feeling.

After parents (and sometimes before them), the coach is the most important person in the educational process of school sports.  Good coaches can redeem the bad decisions that administrators or parents sometimes make; and bad coaches can ruin the best decisions of administrators and parents.

Coaches have enormous influence over how kids think, how they act and what they value.

There is no time or money better spent in school sports than the time and money spent on coaches education.  Every coach, every year in continuing education regarding the best practices of supervision, instruction and sports safety, as well as in ethics, values, sportsmanship and leadership.

The MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program should be the centerpiece of every school district’s ongoing, multi-faceted training program for coaches.  We expect continuing education for classroom teachers.  Why would we ever consider less for those who work with large numbers of students in settings of high emotion and with some risk of injury attended by hundreds or even thousands of spectators?

A Different Language

January 16, 2015

Every other year my wife and I are able to spend the December holidays with our son and his wife who are international school educators, but we must journey to the other side of the world to make that happen. In crossing both the international dateline and the equator to see them in Australia last month, I learned a helpful lesson for those of us who try to communicate about school sports.

For two weeks I attempted to be a follower of Australia's "national pastime" -- cricket -- but try as I might, I could not grasp a passable understanding of the sport. On the surface, cricket seems a lot like baseball; but there are far more differences than similarities to the sport many North, Central and Latin Americans grew up with and know so well. I watched cricket on television and read the extensive newspaper coverage every day; but even after studying the rules and listening to and questioning a local expert, even the most basic rules, strategies and language of cricket remain mysteries to me.  

For a while at least, my struggle with cricket may make me more understanding of some parents and others who are so quick to criticize high school sports. Possibly I’ll be more purposeful and patient to explain our policies and the philosophies behind them.

Many of today's parents and spectators have never played the sports their children now play. They don't really know the rules and strategies of the games that were not a part of their upbringing, and they tend to be more unreasonably critical of decisions by coaches and officials in those sports.

Competitive cheer, gymnastics, lacrosse, ice hockey, soccer and other sports seem "foreign" to those who never played those sports. But it's true that in all sports we are likely to experience the most criticism, and the most unjustifiable complaints, where there is the least understanding or appreciation. That's true of a particular sport’s playing rules, and it's also true of the policies and procedures that govern all school sports. And in both cases, this demands extra effort on the part of coaches and administrators to communicate the rules and the reason for those rules.