Having been off of the sidelines for several years now, I realize that all jobs/professions/walks of life, have their own unique sets of hardships and difficulties. And, those difficulties are generally not understood by those outside of that profession.

But honestly, coaching doesn’t really look all that hard does it?

Kids grow up playing and watching the game (insert any sport here), surely you wouldn’t actually have to teach the intricacies of the sport.

You’ve listened to the experts on TV analyze and talk about the game and it’s strategies ad nasuseam.  So much so, that all those ‘in-game’ decisions sound pretty elementary to you by now.

As far as skills and athleticism go….the really good kids, the ones that will help you win, have their own personal trainers for all of that…that’s not something you have to concern yourself with as a coach.

X’s and O’s? Honestly, those aren’t that complicated….it’s not rocket science. It all looks pretty logical and simple to follow when you see them drawn up on TV.

So, coaching really doesn’t look that hard…..just make sure you act mad, yell something like ‘block out!’ every now and then; get yourself a signature ‘fist pump’ or some similar gesture when something good happens; show a lot of frustration when a call or a bounce of the ball doesn’t go your way, etc.. pretty much anybody that is the least bit familiar with sports can do those things

Here is what George Couros (never heard of him till I saw this quote) says about education:

“The cirriculum tells you ‘what’, not the ‘how’.  The ‘how’ is the artistry in education”

To me, all those things listed above are the ‘what’ of coaching. They don’t even begin to approach ‘how’, which is  the true artistry of coaching.

Here are a few examples of the ‘how’ that have to be figured out, that make coaching (and teaching) an absolute brutal (and rewarding) profession:

How do you get your players to sacrifice their own glory for the good of the team? It’s not something that you can just talk about…you have to have a system in place that promotes this.

How are you going to handle it when one of your players comes to you and tells you that his/her parents are having troubles at home?

How are you going to keep your team together when your best player has troubles in the classroom and has to sit out for 3 weeks because they aren’t passing?

How are you going to keep your team together when it’s torn apart by someone (could be a parent) posting something stupid on a social media platform? What if that stupid post actually caused a player to quit or even move?

How are you going to handle it when a school board member or administrator wants special favors for their daughter…even to the point of threatening your termination if it doesn’t go the way they want?

How are you going to handle it when a parent goes to the school board to get you fired because you didn’t play their child enough? How are you going to focus on getting your team ready for the next practice and the next game when that same parent is making completely false accusations?

How are you going to handle it when someone files a federal suit against you thru the Office of Civil Rights, simply because you didn’t play their child enough?

How do you handle it when that coach from your biggest rival is working his/her tail off trying to figure out a way to beat you…and he/she has better players than you? But, you also know that everybody in your town expects you to beat that rival anyway.

How do you handle it when your spouse is at home feeding and putting your kids to bed for 4 months straight while you’re at the gym doing laundry and watching video?

How do you handle it when your own child is sitting in the stands and hears someone call you an idiot, simply because you made a different decision than they would’ve made?

The thing that makes it all even tougher is, what works in one situation doesn’t automatically work in another. Kids are different. Communities are different. Skill levels are different. Socioeconomic factors are different. Administration and leadership within districts are different. It would be easy if everybody could just look at how a successful program is run and copy it!

I love and respect the teaching and coaching profession, and am proud to have been a member of it. Best of luck to each of you as this basketball season gets going full steam. Grind out every day, put your kids first, and the rest of it doesn’t matter!