A Thought on Coaching

I'm not a coach, but I can imagine what it is like to be one.

I think being a coach can really wear a person out. I takes so much energy to be a coach. One job of a coach is to get everyone on the same page and working together. Coaches need to get everyone to stay on the same track and make sure they are doing everything necessary at all times to reach their goals.

It's extremely draining when you think about it.

Think about all the players who constantly show up late to meetings. Every single time you have a problem you try to go over with them why it's important to be on time. You try being nice about it and explaining the consequences of being late. When that doesn't work you punish them and take away things. No luck there? You keep trying. You try to have all the players on the team work together to make sure everyone is on time.

You have to deal with players who have confidence issues. You know exactly how talented they are, yet you can't seem to get everything to click for them. You tell them how great they are. You show them examples of them doing things well and you give them opportunities, yet it just doesn't work out.

Then you have to deal with injuries and bad calls and just dumb luck. You have the perfect game plan but then the player who is supposed to execute that game plan is injured and can't play. When that call costs you a season you just have to deal with it and get ready for next year.

Coaches are constantly working on achieving success and the formula to do that is so complex and ever changing that it takes an enormous amount of energy to do the job. This is especially the case when you reiterate important points to players constantly and they still don't listen.

Coaching seems like it is a lot of fun, and it is. However, it's not for people who want an easy job. It's complex and requires repackaging some of the same information over and over until the person getting the package thinks it's attractive enough to open up.

The other reason coaching takes up a lot of energy is that it's hard not to think about all of the what ifs. If they weren't injured that game we would have won that. If that call had gone our way that would have been a win. If that player had cut to the left instead of the right they could have gotten open and scored. If we could have just converted that one play. If we were only stronger. If we only did more video sessions. What if this happened questions can consume you. Maybe that more than anything makes coaching mentally hard.