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The Most Important Lesson
by John Reilly
Last year, my sixth as a youth soccer coach and my first as a head coach, our Sharon U14 Girls soccer team won the Massachusetts South Shore League Soccer Championship. I would not describe this team as the most skilled group of players I’ve ever coached and probably couldn’t even describe a single individual as being an outstanding soccer player, but it did get me thinking.
Can we, as coaches, be considered successful just because of a championship? And, if so, have we been coaching failures in years that we didn't happen to win?
In high school, I developed and played in a basketball system that I would describe as fairly successful. Some good years, some bad -- all under the same coach. At the end of my junior year, my teammates voted me as a captain for the following season. Although our experience was somewhat limited (we had only two returning lettermen), I was determined not to enter into what some were already whispering as a “rebuilding” year. We were not going to rebuild in my senior season. Not if I had anything to say about it.
I worked hard that summer. As hard as I’ve ever done anything in my life. Two-thousand jumpshots a day. Day after day. Week after week. I would not come in for bed until those two-thousands shots were complete. Through the springs rains and the summer heat, I wore out my backyard rim. I ran and I ran and I shot and I shot, and by the time football season was wrapping up, I was ready.
I was eagerly anticipating our first practice, and I showed up in the gym determined to lead this team by the example I set on the hardwood. And then a funny thing happened. Less than one hour into the first practice of my senior season, my coach, growing frustrated by the level of play he was witnessing on the floor, kicked us out of practice and into the showers a full two hours before our practice was supposed to end.
As Captain, I took full accountability. I spoke with my teammates in the locker room and I avowed that this was not to happen again. We will give full effort – or don’t bother showing up. They agreed. Only it didn’t matter. We had practices scheduled six days a week. And day after day, practice after practice, Coach kicked us out. Sometimes after ten minutes, sometimes after thirty. But four days a week, for the entire season, we hit the showers early. And the practice time we lost, we never got back.
As the season grew longer and as the expectations of this team, my team, diminished, I tried everything I could think of to save this sinking ship. I visited our coach in his office after hours and I offered to run practices myself if he was too busy. I called clandestine practices on the schoolyard blacktop. But nothing worked. The basketball program and our legend of a coach was rebuilding. And there was nothing I could do about it. That was the year I lost my senior season.
Up here in the New England area, our kids are fortunate enough to be growing up in an era of perhaps two of the finest coaches of their (or any) generation -- Bill Belichick and Terry Francona -- both of whom share one additional commonality. They both also had some spectacular failures in their careers. My conjecture is that they learned from these failures.
That they recognize, as I do now, that coaching is a recipe. A small part teaching. A small part philosophizing. A small part crafting game plans. And a great, great deal of uniting. They learned, as we did with this wonderful soccer team, that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. It’s true that we were not as skilled as many teams -- but our eleven was always better than theirs.
My daughter, Jackie, often admonishes me on the “cheesiness” (her word) that I bring to practice. And I admit that this is true. Before every practice and every game I pull out my torn and tattered piece of paper with the following Isaac Newton quotation: ”If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” This stuff drives Jackie absolutely crazy. But, through my experiences, past and present, I have developed my own style of coaching. She may be accurate in calling it cheesy. But I also stubbornly believe in this philosophy and, like it or not, I won’t be changing anytime soon.
So, kids, as long as I continue to coach, here is my promise to you. On those days that you seem a little preoccupied and on those days when your attention level is not where it needs to be, bring your earplugs and lace tight your cleats. Because I might yell. And I will probably scream. (And you will certainly run.)
But you ain’t going home. I will not quit on you the way my basketball coach did many years before. Because as a coach…as your coach…I owe you more than that. And you deserve better. This is the most important coaching lesson I ever learned. From the worst coach I ever had.