I Promise That I’ll Make You Better
Get on the endline.
Next week I’m going back to coaching lacrosse. I’m slated to be the new JV head coach and Varsity assistant at Hopkinton High School. I coached at the collegiate level for 12 years, all at DII and DIII schools. Half as an assistant; half as a head coach. I have more experience than half of the high school head coaches in New Hampshire.
JV coach? This should be easy.
So - why am I terrified?
I didn’t like who I was at the end of my coaching career. I don’t think anyone in my life at that point would have ever called me “nice”. Or “pleasant”. There was a running joke at the school that I had never smiled in my life. It wasn’t really a joke. I didn’t smile in those last few years. I was dark. I was angry. I was mean. That all came from being a largely negative person spurred by negative thoughts. Now I can trace it back to one simple fact: I didn’t get into coaching for the right reasons.
No. I got into coaching because I hated my college coaches. All of them. I thought they were morons. I thought they had no idea how to create an offense. That they took the job for a check. But mostly...I thought they didn’t care. About the team, about my friends on the team, or about me. I took losses hard. I threw up before games and I cried after them. All of them. Yes, I was an emo soft boi. Therapy helped.
In my senior year, the head coach (correctly) saw that my mood was really dragging my team down. I had scored the only goals of the game. I was slumped against the backstop of a tennis court. I had tears streaming down my face. He had enough of it. He praised us for working hard. Praised me for my goals. Praised the opposing team’s talents. And then he said, “Why are you so sad? You played great today.”
“I’m not sad,” I said quietly. “I’m angry. Because we lost.”
“Kyle, that team is so good you would be a d-middie for them.” He meant it as a compliment. I didn’t take it that way.
I snapped. Then I stood up. Or maybe it was the other way around.
“Do you think I care about scoring goals? I would love to be a d-mid for that team because we would be WINNING! I’m so sick of losing! Why are we always LOSING?!” I didn’t realize it at the time but I wasn’t yelling; I was screaming. (And yes, I took out a lot of emphatic punctuated swearing in this re-telling.)
What I didn’t know then, what I hope I understand now, is that being a coach is more than knowing the game. Being a coach is accepting the responsibility of being in charge of a certain group of peoples’ lives. It’s a heaviness on your chest that only release after the final whistle of the final game - if you’re lucky.
I wasn’t lucky. I took it to heart. That’s the thing with coaching as your chosen vocation - it can consume you if you let it. If you take things personally all the time they will become that even if they’re not.
I would always craft and tinker with goals. For the team, for the players, for my staff, and especially for myself. I failed daily. I don’t think I was a good coach. Not for everyone. Certainly not all the time. But I was obsessed with it.
I did love all my kids and I said that to them often. Even the ones that put their faces through plate glass windows at downtown bars. Even the ones who dislocated their knees on senior booze cruises. Even the ones who quit mid-season because it was cutting into their party time.
But saying something means nothing if you have no actions to support your words. The actions are the things that matter in the real world. The absence of actions also make an impact.
Ergo, I make the following oaths:
I’m not going to scream at refs.
I’m not going to throw my hat into the dirt and stomp on it.
I’m not going to pick up the bench and throw it down the hillside.
I’m not going to ask a ref how long he has been an official only to interrupt him afterward to say, “Well, that’s how long you have sucked at it!”
I’m not going to pick up the water bottles and throw them into the woods one by one during a game because we couldn’t run a man-up play.
I’m not going to grab a kid and pull him back into the box to stop an offside call.
I’m not going to call stick checks on the other team when we’re down by 10 goals.
I’m not going to put my palms in the air on every bad call.
I’m not going to pull out the trash can and leave it at half field so kids can have something to puke in because they’re running too much.
My coaching sins are as darkly hilarious as they are many, but that coach -that person - is gone. I try not to think about all the horrible mistakes I made. All the cringy things I said. I’ll never be fully absolved.
But things are different now. I’m different. I think.
Not big on promises, but I will make one to all of my new kids: I promise you that if you listen to what I’m trying to teach you, and you work hard that you will be a better player. That’s it. That’s the deal now. That’s coaching. It’s not whiteboards of trick plays and laborious film sessions mixed with insane conditioning and wall ball drills. It’s listening and working hard.
I can’t believe that I’m a lacrosse coach.
Again.