A Coach’s Job
When I was in the dog days of building the women’s basketball program at the University of Oklahoma, I called my good friend Geno Auriemma one evening to solicit some advice. When he answered, I laid out the laundry list of things that had recently gone awry. Those players I had were impossible! I had to do everything! They were so needy! I raced on without a breath.
When I finally came up for air, Geno said in his scarcely camouflaged Italian smugness, ”Mmm hmm. I see.”
Then he said, “Do you know what your job is?” When he paused to let me try to answer, my brain conveniently ran somewhere and hid. That’s when the soft bed I had envisioned turned to concrete. From the silence he answered for me.
“Your job is to be whatever they need you to be. If they need a cheerleader, then be a cheerleader. If they need an instructor, then be an instructor. If they need a disciplinarian, be a disciplinarian. This isn’t about you, it’s about them.” The air felt like lead.
I hung up madder than an old wet hen. I was embarrassed and I was furious.
I was both because I knew he was right.
A coach’s job is big and bulky. It’s stock full of responsibilities, the least of which is winning. It bulges with things that haven’t and won’t ever fit in a box or a bag. And the responsibilities morph, depending on the day. A good coach lives at attention, always in a ready stance for what might be required.
Retrieved from https://www2.baylor.edu/
I heard the legendary Baylor football coach, Grant Teaff, say one time that sports are “the last bastion.” (I wish I could type it the way he said it—all stretched out, like Texas French.) The dictionary defines bastion as “an institution, place, or person strongly defending or upholding particular principles, attitudes, or activities.” Coach fought for the games because he believed in the power of sport. He believed in his bones that people come out of the cauldron of competition better humans than they were when they went in. He loved to coach because he felt the football field was where men were made.
If you participated in sports, you probably feel as if the games made you. Or those who coached them did. The line of demarcation runs undeniably thin.
When Coach Teaff delivered the impassioned speech I witnessed, it was the mid 80’s and sports were being threatened. Physical education classes were being removed from public schools and people were throwing rocks at organized sports. Fortunately, the world couldn’t kill the games. Forty years later, the “bastion” is still standing, though one could argue it’s been hit and might be bleeding out.
In many ways, sports have become unrecognizable. Outside entities now drive athlete affiliation and motivation, the lure of money infects sound judgment while increasing pressure on performance, and the fences that once created a semblance of order around the games have been hewn down by governing entities who are running scared. Athletics have been stretched to serve so many masters that it can feel, at times, as if they are a long, lost friend--someone we simply used to know. The character clearinghouse that Grant Teaff championed teeters on a fragile cliff.
And yet, a coach’s job is still a coach’s job. Despite the systematic and systemic constraints, discipline must be instilled. In and around pesky social constructs, commitment must be forged. The job is to build better humans. No bonus points will be awarded for degree of difficulty. The task is to push the boulder up the hill-- no matter what it weighs.
And while it’s maybe harder than it has ever been to coach, it’s also harder than it’s ever been to play.
Young athletes arrive on coaches’ doorsteps less equipped than ever before to face more varied challenges than ever before and they need coaches-- more than ever before-- to help them find their way. They are begging for the soul spoils of sport, though they don’t have the capacity to know how to ask. Today’s athlete comes wearing a weighted vest. He arrives at the door fully coated in armor, carrying a backpack stuffed with others’ expectations, harnessing a head swirling with outside noise and a heart that’s swamped by fear. He talks about unconditional love but rarely knows what it feels like. He swears by the work but doesn’t know yet that it’s the prize. He needs a therapist and a financial advisor, a hard line and a soft heart.
He needs a coach.
A coach whose job was, is, and forever will be to meet his players where they are and be whatever it is they need him to be. What a challenge. What an honor. What a way to make a life.