Philosophies in progress: Coaching

Coaching, is it really just another form of teaching? You have a group of youths gathered for a similar purpose, with the desire to learn and enhance their skills. As a coach you have the same responsibilities as a teacher, to educate anyone who is willing to learn. By becoming a physical education teacher I dedicate my time to enhancing the knowledge of any athlete in any sport to the best of my ability who has the desire to learn and make himself or herself better. As a coach you have the responsibility to instill more than just sports skills into your team; cooperation, respect, and responsibility are major components when discussing the positive outcomes of athletics. Allowing students to participate in cooperative sports puts the athlete in a social environment where they will learn to cope with decisions that may not be made by or directly benefiting them. This also allows them to be placed in confrontational situations where they will have to decided how to act. If the program is successful student-athletes will be able to understand that words can solve more problems than violence. Slowly but effectively students will start to gain independence and self-responsibility allowing them to accept consequences when they are deserved. All aspects attribute to outside personal skills as well as on the field skills. Athletics is a major outlet for most students, allowing self-expression by choosing the desired sport they engage in. This decision can be brought back to the experiences athletes gain through the influences by the coaches. Coaches hold a much hire pull in game play than parents or spectators, so it really is the relationship between the athlete and coach that must be strong. The only way a relationship can grow is through experiences both positive and negative, if we do not have the negative how will we ever learn from our mistakes. Learning how to cope with the stressful situations is a great asset that all athletes gain through dedicated hard work. Such as juggling being a Student-Athlete, the reason we say student first is because the academic of our athletes is first and foremost more important than winning a soccer game. By high school we have tri-student-athletes meaning they will engage in a varsity sport every season having them being constantly busy all year round. Some student-athletes are unable to handle the pressures of both but the few that can gain the value of hard work and prioritize ones work load.