Epsisode 15-Thank you for being a friend

The podcast episode discusses the importance of being a friend as a coach. The host shares personal experiences and references a movie about a coach who prioritizes winning over relationships. The host reflects on his own coaching style and emphasizes the need to understand and support athletes. He also shares letters from grateful athletes who appreciate his coaching approach. The episode concludes with responses from former athletes about the valuable lessons they learned from Coach Rick. The lessons include discipline, consistency, patience, and the importance of hard work. These lessons have carried over into their college and adult lives. Hey there coaches, welcome back to Gotcha Coach. A podcast about coaching for coaches and hosted by a real coach, me. I'm Coach Rick, your host, and welcome to episode 15 entitled Thank You For Being A Friend. Now, many of you, okay, maybe some of you, or maybe in reality, none of you will recall that this title is the theme song from the sitcom, The Golden Girls. One of my wife's all time favorites. When you choose to become a youth athletic coach, no matter at what level you choose, there are times when, in addition to coming off as somewhat of a hard ass, you need to act like, and actually be, a friend. Webster's Dictionary, your friend, refers to a friend as, quote, a person who you like and you enjoy being with, a person who helps or supports someone, end quote. If you choose to not be a friend, you set a tone for your team that looks like all you want to do is train, train, train all the time and be totally businesslike or yelling and telling the team what they're doing wrong without any flexibility at all. Now, be honest. How many of you were on a team with a coach like this? Did you enjoy it at all, ever? Now, I realize that this movie reference that I'm about to make is from 1977 and it's about college sports, but it still resonates with what this episode is about. One on One with Robbie Benson is a movie about a small town high school basketball hero who gets a full ride scholarship to a big college in Los Angeles. Western University, after being courted by the school's head coach, and then is brutally pushed aside and asked to give back his scholarship because he just didn't fit in. So when I first watched this movie, I thought the story was about UCLA basketball and its legendary coach, John Wooden, who was referred to as the, quote, the best basketball player ever, who was referred to as the, quote, wizard of Westwood, end quote. Get it? Western? Westwood? At the time, I absolutely hated UCLA basketball and John Wooden. Why? Because they had been virtually unbeatable through the mid-60s and mid-70s, which included 10 national titles between 1964 and 1975, including an 88-game winning streak and 46 weeks atop the Associated Press Top 25 poll, which is still, to this day, a record. Not to mention that I was a Stanford fan and they were both in the same conference and UCLA would kick our butts continuously. Now, having been a coach of an underdog, non-winning track and cross-country team at the time, I informed my opinion about Coach Wooden and his style without knowing even who he was and what his philosophy was. All I knew is that he won at whatever expense. That I didn't know. I viewed this movie as the way that UCLA, aka Westwood, operated as the model for success. It wasn't until much, much later in my career that I actually studied Coach Wooden and his style by reading his book. Yes, Val, I read a book. The book was called Wooden, A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections on and off the court. This book was given to me by my middle school basketball team. It was at this time that I started to understand that coaches did not always have to be assholes and could actually be advocates for their athletes or a friend. It's a fine line when you're coaching between how you go about building a winning team and one that loves and admires you as a coach, but sucks during competition. And, well, this is where you need to figure out what kind of coach and program you want to build. Of course, it's different if you're strictly coaching your nine-year-old AYSO soccer team, or you're in charge of a hundred plus team of boys and girls at the high school level. Keep everything in perspective and don't confuse the two. I spent many years after watching this movie and reading this book. Yes, Val, I retained what I read in the book. Striving to become a, quote unquote, better coach by means of better understanding my athletes, their situations, both on and off the track, and trying to use this knowledge as a positive training tool. Before I go any further, I need to explain to you why I make extra comments to my wife, Val, about my reading and retaining information from books. You see, I hate reading books, and she absolutely loves reading them. So we are constantly, quote, discussing our love-hate relationship with reading books. So when I go to her, I'm not just going to read her books, I'm going to read her books. So when I do read one and can relate to it, I need to make sure that I let her know. Love you, honey. In order to bring home my point about being a friend to your athletes, I asked some of my recent athletes to answer some questions about their feelings towards me and my coaching style. Before I share with you their responses, I need to let you know that most of these athletes were from my coaching tenure at Lincoln High School in Lincoln, California, from 2016 to 2020. Now, please don't get me wrong. Yes, we won the Girls League Championship in 2019. And these responders are from girls who were part of that team. But I did receive two responses from the boys team members I solicited during that same timeframe. I'm not going to reference their names in their replies because they are still young and don't need to be held up to the possible ridicule because they, quote unquote, stood up for their coach. Now, before I get into their answers, I wanted to share with you two letters that I received from a couple of my athletes, one from 2006 when I was coaching in Nevada and one from 2016 when I was at Lincoln High School. The first from Nevada was a particularly difficult year for the team as we had no track to train on due to the building of a new all-weather football track complex. And we had to train on the school's soccer field. Talk about having to get creative with workouts. Sheesh! Anyways, we still were able to have a girls 4x4 team that qualified for the Nevada State for a meet with a 4-0-1 tie. And this runner was not only a member of that team, but she was also a 5'2 high jumper. That's what she cleared, not her height. She wrote to me after the state meet where we didn't do as well as we expected and told me that she wanted to, quote, give me a big thank you for the letter sent to all the 4x4 girls and that it made me, quote, her, feel a lot better, end quote. See, I sent them a letter telling them that they had accomplished a great deal during the season and that since they were all returning the next season, the sky was the limit and they should be proud of the accomplishments that they achieved this year. She went on to say, quote, thank you for pushing us this year to do our very best. And I can't wait till next year to do even better, end quote. The next letter was from a thrower in 2016 that I had no direct responsibility over, but still felt compelled to give this to me. She did. She stated the following, quote, you push people to do their best in their events. You encourage me to do my best and that makes me stronger. You encourage me to do my best and that makes me strive to achieve my goals, end quote. She goes on to say, quote, after we finished our OTIs, these are opportunities to improve, which we handed out as discipline. I, the athlete, was laying on the ground and what shocked me was that you came over to me and not to applaud me, but to say, good job and smile and give me a big high five. She continued, quote, that was all I needed to make me feel better. And from that point on, I knew you weren't as bad as I'd heard. You are an amazing person, end quote. What meant more to me than any other letter, note, or verbal statement ever received at the time was that this girl was not, I repeat, not a league champion, not, I repeat again, a school record holder, and wasn't even somebody that we relied on to get us points to duel me. But, apparently, I made a positive input on her life as an athlete and, more important, as a person. When I asked my former athletes the following question, quote, what was the best lesson that Coach Rick taught you? And did this lesson carry over to your college, work, or marriage? Or any other parts of your life as an adult? These were some of the responses. The first lesson, one lesson that I learned from my time with Coach Rick that has stuck with me the most over the years is the importance of discipline and showing up when it gets tough. Coach always tried to instill core values in us that ensured that we were showing up on time, putting forth our best effort every practice, and holding each other accountable while also holding each other up. I have carried the discipline I learned from working with Coach Rick into my current collegiate athletic career. The schedule and training regimen that I have now would be incredibly daunting if it weren't for those core values that I learned from my time with Coach Rick. I have the strength and the discipline that I need to get up every morning and recommit to the sport I love, even when it's hard. And that all started with Coach Rick. The second athlete said, I think the best lesson that Coach Rick taught me was to be patient and consistent because there were times when I wasn't running the times I wanted to run. But he taught me to stay consistent in practice and my times would drop. This carried over to my college track career because there's been times I've been stuck running the same times it meets. But I remember to stay patient and disciplined at practice and eventually it pays off at the meets. Also, he taught me that getting good grades are super important because my freshman year in high school I was ineligible because of my grades. So now in college, I make sure to never let my The third athlete stated this, easily the best lesson that Coach Rick taught me was that good things never come easy and that you must fight and work for good things to happen. This has been a lesson that has lasted not only in my education in college, but also in athletics where I run clubs. The fourth athlete said, I don't think I really ever realized it through high school what coach was trying to teach us other than track. I mean, we always hear that as high school students or athletes from all of the coaches that they are always trying to teach us things for the real world after high school. But I don't think we truly realize that. So Coach Rick taught me that after high school, but I don't think we truly realize what we learned until we are just applying it in our own life in college or the real world. And then there was this response, which I never expected and will probably bring me to tears just reading it because to me, it's very important and epitomizes why exactly I am doing or was doing what I did for all these years. This athlete stated, I think at a time when Coach Rick made me realize that I am an amazing athlete, no matter what the circumstances or situation. My dad was also a coach on the team and was super duper hard on me. I remember one time when he wouldn't let me head over to work on four by one handoffs with Coach Rick because he wanted me to spend all my time focusing on the hurdles. I got really upset and emailed Coach Rick and apologized for not being at handoff practice. Coach Rick emailed me back and told me that he was totally understanding of how stressed I had been lately, trying to live up to my dad's expectations. And he told me that no matter what happens during the season, he would support me. As I moved on to college, I have kept this email all this time and look back on it every once in a while. It has gotten me through a lot of hard times dealing with track in college and has reminded me that no matter what, I am always going to have a supporter, whether it's another person or myself. And that's what should keep me going. This is my point, people. You as a high school coach spend upwards of 20 hours a week with your team and maybe more, which if you have a full-time job other than being a coach, you might very well be spending more time with your team than your might very well be spending more time with your team than your family. And your team becomes an extension of you and who you are. If you're doing it right, you can teach your team life values and life lessons as well as the events that they are competing in. And they might even retain what you've taught them as they move on away from high school. I hope that you are enjoying the podcast and may even be learning some things from my experiences that I share and that this may lead you to a career in coaching youth sports, no matter what level or sport you choose. If you're enjoying the podcast, please tell your friends about it and that they can listen to it on Spotify, Google, iHeartRadio, Amazon, Buzzsprout, and other places where they can get their podcasts. So remember, you can reach me with feedback, questions, or even episode ideas at coachrickb53 at gmail.com. Before I sign off, I want to tell you how much your support means to me in this endeavor. So thank you for being a friend. Until next time, take care, be safe, laugh a lot, and tell someone that you love them. I'll talk to you soon.