Strategy is a huge part of sports.  Should you call for zone or man defense?  Play your infielders in or at double-play depth with 1 out and the bases loaded?  How should you handle your substitutions and timeouts?  And the list goes on.

I’ve also been learning that strategy can be a big part of our lives.  It has been in mine, and unfortunately sports played a significant role.  Strategies can be a good thing, in that we want to live intentionally and strategically.  We want to know what we’re doing and why.  However, strategies can also be a negative.  When a young person struggles with his sense of self-worth from a very young age, he will have an ache in his spirit that he’s largely unaware of, and you better believe he will develop strategies to dull that ache.  This is my story.

From the time I was maybe five or six years old, I went through life wondering about my value and importance, feeling that it would be hard for people to love me.  I certainly didn’t realize this was going on; I was just a little kid.  But right around this same time in my life, I began to notice that the people around me, family, kids in the neighborhood, people like that, really cared about sports.  Someone who could achieve something athletically was a big deal.  And conversely, the kids on the playground who were bad at sports were considered less than.

I didn’t know much back then, but I knew I wanted to be somebody.  I wanted to be special and important. I definitely didn’t want to be considered less than.  So I threw everything I had into playing sports as often and as well as I could.  I became addicted to playing and watching ballgames of all kinds.  And what began to happen is that my worth as a human being became all wrapped up in athletic achievement.  I believed that if I could be a star athlete, I’d be more lovable and have more friends.  As I got older, I believed that if I could play quarterback for my high school team or be an all-county baseball player that girls would flock to me.

In four years of college ball I went from 6th on the depth chart to 5th, but never entertained the idea of walking away from the program.  Maybe that sounds admirable, but my reasons for staying around had nothing to do with perseverance, discipline or loyalty.  I simply couldn’t bear the thought of walking around campus without being able to think of myself as an athlete.  Thinking of myself as an athlete meant I was better than the nerds, actors, singers, musicians, writers, etc.  In my mind, those activities were strictly for people who didn’t have what it takes to play ball.  By my definition, they were inherently inferior and I was a bigger deal than they were.

The whole things probably seems ridiculous, but I remember feeling jealousy burn inside me when I would hear someone described as a great athlete.  And the fact that I was addicted to sports was by far the biggest reason I got into coaching.  When I could no longer play games that ‘mattered’, coaching became my new strategy for staying in the game.  As a young man, coaching became a huge part of my quest for significance. I was using sports and the young people who play them to meet my needs for validation and affirmation.  It sounds kind of scary when I think of it that way, but again, I had no idea this was going on.  I thought I was a pretty good guy.  By many measures I probably was.  I did a lot of really good things.  But I also failed to get past the idea that sports and the people who play them are inherently more important and more valuable than those who don’t.  And although I was smart enough not to act like it most of the time, I’m sure those attitudes came through loud and clear to the players I was coaching and other people around me.

The past few years have provided me with eye-opening experiences and input from people who have helped me begin to understand how for more than 20 years I used sports as a strategy to fill voids in my own personal makeup.  I understand that not every child involved in athletics is coming from a similar place, and not every coach is doing what I was guilty of.  But in this society we live in that is absolutely obsessed with these games people play, it makes me sad to think that there are probably a whole lot more out there than we realize.

What will happen as more and more coaches use their influence to help young athletes understand that sports are a great gift to be enjoyed, but that they cannot provide us with value and significance as human beings?  That being an athlete or a coach does not make us better or more important than other people?  Some people will probably be shocked in the short term.  We aren’t used to coaches putting out that message.  But in the long run, it sounds like a recipe for healthier people in a healthier society.