Coaching

As with most things in life it is all about connections. Evidently, I do not have good ones. I am a little Pollyanna in thinking that people should recognize talent. Well, I do.

I am not cut out to be a Varsity head coach. I am fine as a FS coach. I can do well there. The expectations are low and I can usually outcoach the other guy if it comes down to it. Talent is usually what gets in the way.

But, this is not my rant. My rant is about jerk coaches who fill that ranks. Many of these people were solid basketball players in their day. I was never a good player. I am still not a good player. I do know the game. Maybe that helps put my ego in perspective because when I look at my players, I know they are all better players than I.

The coaching field is filled with this guys and they are real jerks. They think of themselves a God's gift to coaching. They berate players and often teach people how to cheat. I am all for technique and love of the game. I do not mean to be holier than thou. I too have my demons. I had several blow ups during the season including one really bad one. I had to do damage control and a self assessment. I was wrong. I belittle my team and berated them. I did some dumb coaching things that night. A player and a parent called me on it and I had to admit I was wrong. I even sent a note to all the parents and apologized. I had a team meeting and did the same thing. I think that incident went a long way towards the success we had for the rest of the season. We were 2-2 in league at that point. We ended up 8-4. Thus we went 6-2 down the stretch and we had six of those games sans our best player who was pulled up to Varsity. Thus I am not a saint either.

But I do not run up scores. I do not leave my starter in the whole game if we are running over a team. I do not press all game. I take the dogs off. It annoys me when coaches say that they are not going to stop coaching when they are up by a lot as their justification for what they are doing. I am still coaching too; I am just doing it with my lesser players. I try to use it as teaching time. I try to not be too critical of them as well. I should know they are my lesser players. I am not the best. I did have a playing crisis and I did point out how my lesser players got crushed when I put them on the court. It ended the crisis but it was pretty damn mean. It was just reality but it is hard when you slap it with them instead of letting them come to their own conclusions.

Well we came in second place in league. I was pretty happy. But, the post season league meeting was not fun. We did not get the respect we deserved as the second place team. The 4th place team was more honored than we were. No one understood why I was upset. They we all for themselves and kept using the same arguments and kept belittling my team. If they were that much better then they should have swept us or figured out how to beat the teams we swept and they did not. No on figured out how to beat the league champion. I was still angry and upset and thinking about it three days later.

I am pretty sure that I am not going to coach at my current school again this year. I was definite a month ago. Then I started talking to people and they caused me to waver. I think I am getting over it. I just cannot stand the head coach. He is still living in high school and how great he was. Ok, maybe part of that is jealousy because I had no high school career. But, he graduated 35 years ago. Maybe he should get over it. He has so much knowledge in his head. I am in awe of it. But, I have seen him coach for a year and he cannot translate it to the kids. He loses his audience and hence his team does not get better. I am not a great coach. I will never be a great coach. I will not be a good varsity coach. I am just going to be a decent FS coach. I am just not going to do it for a while.