In Lesson 2 of Module 3 in the Coaching With Purpose lessons that we use in Coaching Life Groups, we read this quote:

No, not that Baseball Joe

Although I was a reasonably good guy, I was relating to many of my players as if our relationship was a business deal.  I would care about them and coach them well as long as they lived up to their end of the deal.  If they failed to perform, or worse, decided to stop playing for us, I had very little time for them.

In a group meeting last week, I read those words and felt a pang of regret.  I was reminded of a situation in 2001 when I was about to begin my 4th season coaching high school football.  In 2000, our program had taken a major leap and heading into ’01 there was plenty of preseason talk about a state title.  As summer workouts were winding down, one of our returning starters, a junior named Joe, let the Coaches know that he was planning to step away from football to focus on baseball.

In 2015 there are far fewer multi-sport athletes in many of our high schools, so maybe this would be less of a surprise, but fourteen years ago, returning starters didn’t quit a sport very often.  I had only occasionally seen it happen before, and never to a team that I helped coach.  And being the immature individual I was then, I took it personally.  I didn’t stop to think and realize that I was taking it personally, I just did.  To get my digs in on Joe, I nicknamed him “Baseball Joe”, and I meant it in a sarcastic, snarky way.  In my underhanded, passive-aggressive way, I wanted to send the message to Joe that he had hurt my feelings and that I felt betrayed.

Imagine that.  I, the adult in the situation, taking subtle shots at a kid.  It really doesn’t matter why.  There was no excuse.  I really don’t know if it was a big deal to Joe (although I remember his mother did complain once that a Coach at our school had named him Baseball Joe, which was easy enough to explain away since his name was Joe and he played baseball), but it was a crappy way to treat a young man.  A young man who I was willing to love and care for as long as he was playing for our team and helping us win games.

I would love to tell you that I’m the only Coach who’s ever done this to one of my former players, but as I think about it, I know I’d seen some of the same things go on when I was in high school.  Players, especially talented players, who stopped playing a sport to do other things were going to pay a price.  It usually wasn’t huge or obvious, nothing that would get someone fired or anything like that, but I can remember comments from Coaches toward those guys that were designed to twist the knife just a little.  Not to excuse my own wrong choices, but when I was being a jerk to Joe I was certainly imitating things I had seen before.  And there’s little doubt that similar situations happen all over the country.

In his well-known book The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren begins the entire book by writing these words, “It’s not about you.”  Coaches like me, who are inclined to take it personally when a player walks away from our program, would do well to take those words to heart.  If a player leaves us it’s natural to want them back.  It’s good to want players to stick with our program.  But do we want them to stay with us for what the program can do for them, or for what the player can do for us?

It’s not a business deal, and it’s not about you.