In a bout of insomnia, I was reading a post on another platform about coaching high school football.
This young coach was lamenting about the hours, the pay and realizing he had no idea what he’d gotten himself into.
My reply was so surprisingly well received, I thought I’d share it here as well:
Coached football for over 30 years, 13 as a head varsity coach.
It’s daunting. Believe me, I do understand. If you break down what they pay you for a stipend and do the math, you’re making way below minimum wage.
It gets even more exhausting if your teaching gig isn’t compatible. While every opposing head coach on our schedule did ISS, PE or study halls during the day (Edit: EXCEPT for toots, who taught personal finance, basic business, and economics), I was a full time biology and chemistry teacher.
Loved both roles. Never loved trying to excel at both simultaneously.
Is it worth it? Financially, you’d probably be better off working a couple weekly shifts at a QT. It’s challenging to a marriage and you have to have a great wife that can hold down the fort for several months with little assistance.
The hours will be long, there will be setbacks and genuine tragedy, drama, and irrational criticism will be shoved uninvited in your face all too often.
So, why do it at all?
Because coaching athletics is the most important facet of any high school education. We teach sacrifice. We teach work ethic, we teach punctuality and accountability. We make young men (and far too many lack an adult male influence in their lives) how to push themselves and do things they didn’t realize they could do. We expose many of them to overcoming pain and adversity. We demand selflessness and being a great teammate. They learn how to work in a unit with other humans to achieve a common goal.
There is not a better calling than being responsible for other people’s successes. Sometimes the benefits are hard to see, but they’re there. Cherish those moments when the team has trained together months…years…even. They enter a weekly practice against a formidable opponent that no one believes you can beat. They start the week with great attitudes, nevertheless. They are hungry to learn the game plan the staff has designed over the weekend. The scout team has a great week. The position coaches are honing technique. The coordinators are implementing the game plan. The managers are hustling, setting up drills and keeping players hydrated between reps. The entire program is on board.
Players are showing improvement in many ways that week and, by Friday, they are excited to play and feel very confident, despite that on paper the game seems un winnable. Nobody gives this team a chance. That doesn’t matter, though…the only opinions that really count are the ones wearing uniforms.
And then they go out and execute the game plan with precision. With confidence. They rise and overcome adversity. Big plays are made in clutch situations. And then - the whole state is shocked at the final score. In in the end, as you all gather postgame, the looks on the players’ faces, although marred and bloody …and many with tears in their eyes…are ecstatic.
You can’t buy that feeling. That emotion. It has to be earned.
And when they do earn it, there’s nothing like it in the world. Weak and timid souls will never know the experience because it’s too hard for most to even dare to attain. And when these victories are achieved by commitment, toughness and grit…and the band is playing and the parents and fans are giddy with delight and excitement…well, they have to be, in that moment, some of the luckiest young men in America.
www.yahoo.com
