Reminiscing ramble ahead…
As the local ball season winds down, I can’t help but remember how much I loved playing fast pitch when I was a kid. I played for the same coach for 10 years, and we were ultra loyal to him, because we respected him so much.
His approach to coaching was not that he was trying to make us winners, but instead he was trying to make us better people, and in doing so we won our fair share of championships.
He believed in sportsmanship over skill, and would bench you for being a poor sport, regardless if you were the only pitcher we had that evening. There were no superstars allowed on our team.
We could win 18-0 and he’d make us run laps after if we didn’t show good sportsmanship. But we could lose 18-0 and he’d take us for Slurpees afterward because we played our hearts out and maintained good sportsmanship.
He asked for only three things from us… play your absolute best, be a good sport, and have fun.
A coach that didn’t believe that winning was the most important thing was tough for some to take (kids and parents alike), so they’d quit and join another team. But many times we’d see them again when we were collecting our gold medals after beating their new team.
After he stopped coaching, I played one more season before hanging up my cleats and saying goodbye to competitive sports. To this day, I still can’t stand coaches with the attitude that winning is everything. You can take all the best players and put them on the same team and they won’t always win the championship (look at teams like the Yankees or the Oilers) Winning is the side effect of good coaching, and in the end always remember, you’re playing a kids game.
Awesome….thanks for sharing!