coaching respect

We start our tempo workout at Walpole High School's track, which wraps around the turf football field. There are about 80-120 youths, ranging from around 3rd to 6th grade, practicing football in rain and wind as we huff and puff through our managed workout.

"Don't drop the ball!! Why don't you listen?! You gotta do it this way!", screams one of the coaches to a child as they practice just feet from me next to the sideline. While the workout takes a considerable amount of concentration its' actual intensity is not that hard with a pace that correlates to what could be maintained for around an hour in a race situation.

Slipping from my mouth comes, and not at a level to be called inaudible, "what an asshole" before I can think of how inappropriate it is for me to say that in front of children. Regardless, my run continues and so does the practice for the children. Not sure if anyone heard, the minutes tick away as I put together a combined total of almost forty minutes of running at 5:30ish pace.

As my run is ending, maybe about ten minutes left of anaerobic threshold running, I hear a change in the way the coach is talking to the kids. "Remember, use the hands god gave you," he says with the same Boston accent but a lot less tough gruff. I then find myself remembering that children are lucky to have people that care as much as these men do in their lives. I hope that these coaches remember, as they are brimming with passion, that the worst injury any child can suffer is that of losing love for a sport and that as coaches they hold so much of a young athletes esteem in their hands. Successful workout done I walk away from the track with a begrudging respect for a man that does not do things my way but is still there, in wind and rain, for the kids.