Welcome Back; Coaches and Student-Athletes

Welcome Back…

August 30, 2015

By Chris LeGates, TCS Co-Host

For coaches of fall sports, the month of August is always a time of rebirth, optimism, and excitement. You have worked on your sessions, planned out everything, and you count the days until you start.  The players, on the other hand, are counting the days as if it was leading up to their executions.  Once on the field, or court, or course, you quickly remember why you loved coaching the sport in the first place. Logistics have been taken care of, somewhere along the line something has inevitably gone wrong, (uniforms show up with polka dots or with the wrong team name) but now comes the practices, and working with the kids, and it is bigger than all the nightmares you deal with.  In New England, soccer preseason starts in ninety-degree weather, and if the season goes well, there could be snow on the ground by the time it ends.  When the players are fast asleep, you are watching a video, dissecting, analyzing, and wondering how to make it better.  Your rides home from practice or games are an endless session of rewind and replay in your mind, and asking yourself, “what could I have done differently”?  The next morning, your breakfast napkins become an impromptu whiteboard for you to draw diagrams of drills for that afternoon’s practice.  Your family has put a picture of you on a milk carton, and you have started arranging the living room furniture in your team’s formation.  You have been stopped by athletes and have had to put on the therapist hat to give them the assurance that they are going in the right direction.  You have been told how little of a budget you have, and that the field may or may not be cut and lined in time for your next match.  You have probably been hailed into the trainer’s office to be told that your star player has an ailment that will keep them out of practice, and just like the cut and the lines, they may or may not be ready for the next game.  You do not have a multi-year contract, a six-figure shoe deal, a staff of seven, or a private plane to take you to the games.  You have box lunches, hopefully, a bus with a bathroom, and the most loyal assistant that puts the program before everything else.  You have free-floating anxiety before the games, and you jump up to question the official’s call until you see it is in your favor, and you tell them, “great call ref”!  When your team is not playing well, you wonder why you ever signed on to do this, and when it is going great, you want to go into administration to negotiate a lifetime contract.  Mind you, all of that can happen in the course of one game.  You see athletes grow, mature and develop, right before your eyes.  You see them step outside of their comfort zones and grasp the concepts that you thought they never would. You see leaders emerge, teams evolve, and, if you catch lightning in a bottle, you will see champions born.  However, it is not totally about all of that.  It is about the former player that you had that has come back to visit to tell you what an impact you, their teammates, and the sport has had on their life.  That the message that you conveyed (and never thought they were listening to) had a profound effect on them.  You realize that over time the results do not matter – they are barely remembered, but, what is lasting, are the relationships, the messages, and the camaraderie.  It is then, when you look back, that you as a coach can truly see how far you have come!  As the new school year starts… best of luck to student-athletes and coaches everywhere – WELCOME BACK!

Our next podcast will be coming in the next few weeks and it will be a great way to kick off the new school year.  TCS is always here for you, so please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or comments:  info@tacklingcollegesports.com

We hope that you are enjoying the TCS podcasts, website, and blogs.  And if so, we ask that you please share us with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Good Luck and ALWAYS, #BeYourBest

Chris