Sports Column: Coaching youth sports is rewarding

BY ALEX CONOVER
Sports Editor

My first season coaching junior high football will be over in a few days. Besides the low pay and long hours, it has been an interesting and rewarding experience. I’ll usually meet the kids down at the field around 3:45 p.m. They come dragging band instruments, backpacks and art projects. While tying their cleats, they incessantly chatter about the day’s events, so much that I need to remind them constantly to get their helmets on and go warm up. After a stretch, the coaches and I will put them
through a practice designed to get them ready for their next game. My team has 16 players, which leaves us with only five bench players during games. Regardless, we’ve still managed to amass a 4-2 record.

Things that are trivial to us “grown-ups” are big deals to my players. They’ll argue all day for the honor of leading stretches or calling the coin flip before a game. I often forget how emotionally fragile a seventh grader can be, as I’ve seen kids cry over being called fat, getting their feet stepped on or getting the breath knocked out of them. I want to tell them to suck it up, but I always have to remind myself that they’re only 13 years old.

I like almost all of the kids that I coach; the ones that rub me the wrong way are the ones that I can tell aren’t trying. My favorites aren’t the guys who are the most skilled; rather, they’re the ones who I can see are giving the extra effort. One of my favorite players is the shortest and skinniest kid on the team; he has a stutter when he talks and his hair goes over his eyes when he has his helmet on. Despite all of these shortcomings, he continues to impress me with how hard he works on the field. When the other kids are fooling around at practice, he’s the one looking me in the eye and absorbing what I’m trying to teach him.

Although I’m planning on becoming a teacher after I graduate, I highly recommend coaching youth sports to any former athlete, regardless of major. You’ll have some fun, make a little bit of money and help kids succeed.