Notations From the Grid (Weekly Edition): Honoring Coach Wooden

 

COACH'S
FAVORITE POETRY
AND PROSE

 

COACHES NEVER LOSE

 

A team can lose. Any team can lose.

But in a sense, a very real sense a coach never loses.

For the job of a coach is over and finished once the starting whistle blows. They know they've won or lost before play starts.

For a coach has two tasks. The minor one is to teach skills: to teach a child how to run faster, hit harder, block better, kick farther, jump higher.

The second task: the major task is to make grown-ups out of children.

It’s to teach an attitude of mind. It’s to implant character and not simply impart skills.

It’s to teach children to play fair. This goes without saying. It's to teach them to be humble in victory and proud in defeat. This goes without saying.

But more importantly it’s to teach them to live up to their potential no matter what their potential is.

It’s to teach them to do their best and never be satisfied with what they are. But to strive to be as good as they can be if they tried harder.

A coach can never make a great player out of a child who isn’t potentially great. But they can make a great competitor out of anyone. And miraculously they can make a grown-up out of a child.

For a coach, the final score doesn’t read so many points for my team, so many points for theirs. Instead it reads: so many grown-ups out of so many children.

And this is the score that is never published. And this is the score that they read to themselves and in which they find their real joy when the last game is over.