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The Value of Coaching by David Jacobson
I grew up having no real appreciation for the value of athletics from the standpoint of its ability to make any substantial positive influence a child's life. My parents stressed academics over sports and made clear that sports were nothing more than means of entertainment. My experience as an adult coaching a girls youth basketball team has changed my outlook.
One of the girls on the first team I coached, a group of 5th-grade girls, was extremely shy, quiet and apparently without self confidence.
The girl's mother wanted her daughter to have some success at something to build her self-confidence. The girl wanted to try basketball because some of her friends were going to play on the team.
At the first game, when the girl received the ball under the basket, she was too afraid to shoot. It didn't help that her mother was yelling at her from the stands to "shoot!" and getting a bit angry at her for failing to shoot. Whenever the girl heard her mother yelling, she looked into the stands. It was obvious that her mother was her source of security. She very much wanted to please her mother and was very disappointed in herself when she didn't.
After observing the girl's play and her mother's behavior in the stands in the first game, I had a talk with her mother and asked her to please stop trying to coach the girl from the stands. I explained that the yelling was not helping and actually making my role as her coach more difficult. I told her to leave the coaching to me, but when her daughter does finally take a shot, even if she doesn't make the basket, cheer for her like you have never cheered before.
The very next game, the girl received the basketball by design after a play I called in timeout. She had my instruction to shoot, no matter what. Well, the play worked, she received the ball, she shot the ball, and she made the basket. Her Mom went absolutely nuts up in the stand. A huge smile appeared on the girl's face and her play became more intense immediately. Her play stayed that way the entire season.
By the end of the season, the team had won roughly half of the games it played. The depressed little girl who started the season was now an outgoing kid with a constant big smile. Her mother came to me after the season and explained to me how the girl had been seriously depressed since her Dad's tragic death in a car accident two years earlier. Although she had been in treatment,it had not been entirely successful. Then she played basketball, experienced some success and the comradship and support of her teammates and her coach. Her mother was pleased at the daughter's seemingly miraculous improvement. She thanked me profusely with a hug and tears in her eyes. I fought back tear from my own eyes.
A couple months after the season was over, I took a break from work and began walking to a local convenience store to buy a can of pop. It was late afternoon and school had been dismissed just a few minutes earlier. As a bus rolled by on the street, I heard a voice yelling, "Hi Coach!" I looked up at the bus to see the girl from the basketball team, leaning out the bus window, waiving her hand at me. She had a huge smile on her face.
The team didn't win that many games. There won't be any division I athletes accepting scholarships from this group of little girl basketball players. The type of success experienced on that team can't be measured in wins, losses or scholarships. In this case, success was measured in the waiving hand and smiling face of a little girl leaning out a bus window on her way home from school and in the joyful tears flowing from the girl's mother's eyes.
The girl is now 15. She doesn't play basketball on the school team. She plays clarinet in the band and runs on the track team. She still smiles and whenever she sees her old coach, she is sure to waive. I have to say that I don't know much about basketball, but I'm sure glad that this little girl and I met on a basketball court. |
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