I have spoken to other coaches and I often wonder how they feel especially when I listen to the words they speak. Unfortunately or fortunately, our lives as a coach are controlled by teenage boys or girls if you coach females. I can tell you from experience as a teenager that I often had no idea what I was doing I just listened to people in charge. Those people in charge might be teachers/coaches, but they just might be peers on any given weekend night. The fear I had as a player of letting people down kept me on a relatively straight and narrow path. I remember one time my father coming home and saying "Perry, you have a lot of people that you could let down because I was just over in town and some people talked about how much they admired you. If you ever do anything stupid, you will let many people down."
You can imagine as a 16 year old kid how weighty that was, very similar to what I felt when I got the head coaching job. A weight that seemed like too much of a burden to carry. Now, it is a burden that I fully accept. What is the difference? The difference is that I realize that the "burden" I thought I felt was nothing more than self pressure. I find it pretty easy to stay out of trouble...always have. To embrace what I already have is easy. It is like embracing the love of basketball or the love of my wife and kids, or loving teaching. It isn't complicated, yet knowing that I can fail and will because everyone's expecation is different is not something that keeps me awake at night.
When I finish coaching, if all they say is that I was a basketball coach, I will feel that I didn't use the platform that I had been given. In fact, I think I want my former players to talk less about basketball that they learned, but as they age to understand what we tried to teach them about life. Their life and serving the lives of people surrounding them is what I want them to understand. I want them to listen and see and hopefully learn because of my poor example how to be positive men; how to be positive husbands and fathers.
