Coaching

What caused me to start this blog was me thinking about coaching. As most of you know I am the coach of the BP (Breen-Phillips) flag football team and I was thinking today about the coaches that I have had in the past and realized somethings.

First, all the coaches that I have had, I never particularly liked them. For example, Coach Taylor (for all you Trojan people you know who I am talking about). He was the biggest douche bag ever and I hated going to practice with him. His chucking of basketballs at players, his finger rolls from the free throw line and the occasional body slam really did not do it for me. Not to mention that we lost a numerous number of games and we aboslutely mediocre.

However despite the fact that I did not like my coaches, it did not mean that I did not respect them. I will use another basketball coach for this one, Coach Sloan. He was a big slime ball and some of things that he did (not with the boys) were at times suspect, but he was a hell of a coach. There was not a team that we played that season that I think we were not better than, or more prepared for every game (we did lose three games if I recall, one of which our best player missed a fucking lay up on a well drawn up play by Sloan). Because of the fact that he actually knew what he was talking about, I respected his ability to coach, as the rest of the players did, and we went on to a successful season.

Lastly the more afraid I was of the coach the more successful the team was. Gazeam (sp?) comes to mind, as well as Sloan (who was an imposing figure at 6-6, and a college basketball player), but no one takes the cake over the 5-6 Albanian mafia member who had to move to America to avoid death in terms of imposing fear on his players (at least this is what we believed). He did not yell, but HE FUCKING YELLED... you fucked up he let you know. Whether it was the infamous "Up-down, boddy" or "It's not sorry, boddy, it's DO IT" every player tried their hardest for fear of being yelled at or intimidated.

So you are all reading and wondering why the fuck does all this matter... but if any of you have talked to me about coaching you know that I would like to embody all of these characteristics as a coach and due to the circumstances of coaching a girls voluntary football team I cannot. Instead of my players not liking me, respecting me or fearing me, I have just the opposite... Some of you may be thinking why would not want my players to like and not be afraid and perhaps that can be reflected on in our record this year. We are 1-3. Most of the coaches listed above (exception Coach Taylor) and not listed (Tom A, Doug Jensen, Adolf to name a few) embodied the characteristics that I want to and you know why?.... We WON games. The coaches that were the opposite (Coach Taylor, Mr Harrington, etc) were players coaches or just did not embody any of the above characterists and you know what, we did not win...

So looking back at my sports career as a player, although I did not always have fun at practice or particullary like the coaches, I now respect more the coaches who did not to try to make friends with the players and instead tried to give it their all and win, because I now look back and enjoy those days a lot more now, then I did then because winning cures all.