It’s All In The Approach
A life lesson from 40 years ago has never been forgotten
By John Engh
Usually in this space, I write about specific issues that challenge youth-sports administrators. And, in many cases, some negative incident has occurred from which we are looking for a proper perspective and a learning opportunity.
Photos: © Can Stock Photo / tammykayphoto
That got me thinking about my own experiences in sports, and how a coach’s actions at a single practice or game can stick with one forever.
Before telling my story, though, there is an exercise we do at the beginning of youth-sports administrator training for recreation professionals who are earning their Certified Youth Sports Administrator (CYSA) credential.
We ask everyone to write down the most important attributes that children gain from youth-sports participation. Some of my favorites: winning and losing with dignity, perseverance, and sportsmanship. The following story illustrates how a good coach enabled me and my teammates to learn a great lesson involving all three of these qualities.
Ordinary Team
I was a member of a team that played for the Florida State Junior Major League championship. We didn’t have Little League or Babe Ruth in our community, but what we did have was a collection of 14-and-under baseball players who were as good as any you could imagine. From my count, eight boys on that team played Division One baseball in college, and two made it all the way to Major League Baseball.
Our All-Star manager was also the coach of my team during the regular season. He was the typical coach you find in youth programs around the country. He had signed up because his son was a decent player, but because he was still a year younger than most on the team, he wasn’t selected. So this coach agreed to volunteer an additional month of his time after the season to coach a new group of boys and travel to a tournament seven hours away in Tallahassee, Fla.
The reason this is a great story (at least to me) isn’t because we won the title (we didn’t); it’s actually about how we never really had a chance to win it, and how the situation was handled.
Eight other regional winners had made it to the final tournament. On day one, my team won two relatively close games to advance to the final game to be played the next day. On the other side of the bracket, a team from Miami had won its two games by a combined score of 35-1, hitting homerun after homerun off some of the best 14-year-old pitchers in the state. These were the days before records and birth certificates could be checked. Now, I cannot write here that every boy on the other team was over 14, but I will say there was more facial hair on that team than I saw in my next two years of high school, and their starting shortstop had driven the team’s passenger van to the game both days!
Extraordinary Coach
But that’s not the story. The story is how our coach and staff approached the game. The night before, instead of listening to all of us complaining about the upcoming slaughter, the coach challenged us. He never let on that he didn’t think we could win the game. He said things like, “Who here thinks that they can get a hit tomorrow?” When every person raised their hand, he said, “If all of you can get a hit, then all of you should get a hit. And I promise you, if that happens, we will have some fun tomorrow.”
Of course, those things only happen in the movies. And not all of us got a hit the next day. But all we talked about the night before the game was being the first player to get a hit. No one was focused on the opposing team. We ended up losing 20-2, but even when the game was out of hand, our coach still made it fun. He put in all of the players who hadn’t had a chance to play and moved everyone else to new positions. We scored those two runs late because we were determined not to get shut out; you would have thought we won the game when our first run scored.
It remains a great memory for me, and when some of the guys from that team get together 40 years later, we still talk about it. That’s the reason it’s so important that organizations are diligent in who they allow to coach kids in the programs—how a coach chooses to handle a random moment can deliver a life-long impact, just like mine did decades ago.
John Engh is executive director of the National Alliance for Youth Sports (NAYS) in West Palm Beach, Fla. He can be reached via email at jengh@nays.org. To join more than 3,000 communities by starting a NAYS Member Organization, visit www.nays.org, email nays@nays.org or call (800) 729-2057.