A Tribute to Coaches

Coaching is a lot harder than it seems. I thought that it would be something that would just be a breeze, especially since I've had many great coaches and I was a collegiate athlete at one point. I felt like I knew my stuff, but once it came to being on the other end of the sport it turned out to be a lot harder than I imagined. For school I had to have 300 hours of internship, I only had 180 left and my old high school track coach needed help and so it all worked out wonderfully, especially since he told me to bring Adam to practice and I got paid a little bit. (Coaches get paid crap. It's bad enough that most of them are teachers and get paid very little there, so they try to supplement their income by coaching and yet again get paid very little.) Though I may sound like an old grumpy person I'm going to say it anyways. A lot of kids these days are lazy, and they are being enabled by their parents because they think that it's always the coaches fault, never their own child. I do have to say that there were some kids on the team that weren't that way, they were wonderful and worked hard to get good, and when they had a bad day it was because of their own fault, not the coaches or some other athletes. But there were many that I coached that were flat out lazy, disrespectful, and selfish. I had a difficult time trying to motivate those athletes because I had to appeal to them each individually in a different way. It was hard trying to explain technique because people really learn and understand in such different ways. Sometime I had to explain in the backwards, craziest ways for it to finally click. Coaching can be very rewarding at times, to be able to watch an athlete that has worked so hard at practice every single day and to finally put everything to get a personal record, and to see how happy and excited they are.It was a wonderful learning experience for coaching and even parenting for me. (I got to watch parents interact with their child/athlete and it was sometimes very interesting.) Well, this last Friday and Saturday was the State track meet down at good old BYU. Not many of our athletes made it to state and so it was very disappointing when 4 of them were sent home a day early for breaking some of the teams rules, right there was a bunch of points that the teams missed out on. Rick Corbridge was the head coach and he was very family-oriented and that's why he wanted me to bring Adam every day to practice, and he wanted Matt to come down to state with us, so I had him and Adam with me. It was nice that I didn't have to spend the night alone in my hotel room, but the day before we went down Adam started to get really sick with infections in both ears, and nasty cough to go with it, and to top it off he got pink eye. But ever since January I started to coach and with all his ear infections he has been such a trooper to go with me everyday, he loved being outside all the time. I'm so grateful for those who have taken care of Adam on the days he didn't go with me and while I was at school and for Corbridge who allowed me to finish 180 hours worth of interning and let Adam come and to Matt who didn't mind a late dinner every night and a cluttered home, and of course Adam who was so good through out the whole thing. I'm happy that this is over though, 5 months is too long! So to all those wonderful coaches out there that put in the time and effort for those kids that you care about so much, I wish I could pay you more for all you do!



Adam slept like that on Matt and wouldn't move, Friday night we got kind of nervous because he was getting so bad.



Matt and Adam hanging out in the shade while I coached my high jumper. Thanks Matt for enduring a two-day track meet for me!