I will say this, I feel that people are pretty much appreciative what we do. The players, the former players, some of the fans, the administration, other coaches, etc, but if you expect to be complimented or thanked, you are coaching for the wrong reason. Many people either don't know or don't care (they expect it to be part of your job) about the effort you put into a job. In fact, many people will gladly allow you to do their job while it is inconvenient or difficult. As soon as they deem it convenient or not as difficult, they will take that work away from you and expect the benefits. Of course, you will be fully expected to bring them up to speed, forget about a learning curve that they should have to endure if they want the benefits of that job. And they very likely will not say "thank you" for all you have done.
That happened recently. If I hadn't personally asked if something were going to be different next year in a part of our program, I would have not known or planned for the difference until I did find out. If I hadn't done that, I am not sure that I would have even gotten a "thank you", but more so, my wife who has done much work in helping with that part of our program.
Now the point of this article, I don't expect a "thank you". The work that I/we put in, I feel is part of my job description. Others don't seem to think so, and I really do believe that until you have full support to run a program all the way down to kindergarten of your program, you can forget being as successful as you possibly can be. But that is not the goal of everyone involved.
A coach at FC recently retired. His comment was, "it wasn't one thing that made me want to do this, it is the collection of many things that have pushed me to this." I understand because when that time does come, I will know fully that too much has piled on.
