Can We Really Impact Lives?

Can success in youth sports equate to success in adult life? Perhaps. Can winning a game teach a young athlete how to win in the working world? Possibly. Can teaching skills that lead to success in sports be utilized by athletes to achieve more in other aspects of their lives? Definitely! Can showing athletes that winning is an outcome of physical and mental preparation translate into success as an adult? Absolutely!

I was reading an article from a Seattle, WA newspaper. A local high school football coach was being interviewed about his coaching philosophy. The coach's name is Ray Robinson, a former professional football player. Here's one of the questions he was asked: Besides your experience in the NFL, what do you bring to your players at Lake Washington?. And here, in part, is Coach Robinson's answer:

I think of myself as their "Life Coach."... When people ask me if I'm a teacher, I tell them that I have the biggest classroom in the school with 80 kids. That's what I love about coaching at the high school level, the chance to show kids how to be men and do the right thing. I always encourage my players to keep things out in the open and talk about any problems and not bottle up their feelings so we can work on getting past their troubles or transgressions. To be honest, helping players deal with off field issues interests me more than the football stuff. This summer we are taking our kids to camp at Camp Casey on Whidbey Island. We are hopeful that they will bond together. I'll be speaking to them about my own life which was both tragic and funny. I hope they can learn to be good teammates who grow together.

Follow this link to the Seattle Pi.com readers blog to see the entire interview:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/highschoolcover2sports/archives/199232.asp

Ray Robinson is a perfect example of how we can impact the lives of young athletes, even if we only have them for one short season. We can teach them not only the fundamentals of a sport, but begin to give them insight into the long-term value of concepts such as Leadership, Teambuilding and Communication. And as Coach Robinson says "I care about these kids and I think that will eventually translate into wins on the football field." If we prepare young athletes, both physically and mentally, how to play the game, how to be a good teammate and what it means to be a leader, the wins will take care of themselves--and the young athletes we work with will develop skills that they can use to achieve more in their off-field lives.