Learning to Coach - Lesson 1
The year was 1992. I was graduating from Drake University in Des Moines, IA. Jobs were abundant. Gas was 99 cents a gallon. The world was my oyster. What the hell does that mean by the way? Why is it good to have the world “be your oyster?” I don’t like oysters. They’re slimy and weird and when people eat them, they look like anacondas preparing to swallow a baby pig. Who decided they were edible in the first place? Should we be eating food we don’t chew? Enough about oysters. The point is, 1992 was a good time to be graduating.
My parents were proud of their English major, Division I Varsity soccer playing son. “What do you want to do with your degree?” they asked me.
“I think I wanna be a soccer coach.” They looked at me like they’d just smelled puke.
I always had the coaching bug. When I was a child, football was my first love; after all, I’m from Wisconsin, the home of the greatest team in the history of American sport: The Green Bay Packers.[1] I spent hours during grade school history class drawing football plays in a notebook. I collected stuffed animals and made them into a football team. It was a hell of a team. I made tremendous use of their talents. I had a gun slinging monkey at quarterback because he has opposable thumbs. I had monkeys at wide receiver, again – opposable thumbs. My middle linebacker was a bear. My safety was a hard-hitting frog. I had a jackrabbit at tailback. My o-line had an elephant. Even at nine years old I understood: you gotta highlight their talents, hide their deficiencies.
In the spring of ‘92, I coached my first soccer team, or co-coached my first team, The Iowa United U13 Boys, with my room and teammate, Doug. The oldest of three brothers, Doug comes from a no-nonsense family or a complete nonsense family. With an Italian mom, opinions and emotional outbursts were a daily occurrence. With a hard-drinking Irish dad, the honesty was brutal. They originated from the steel mills of Pittsburgh before bringing their roadshow to Kansas City. When I first met Doug, I wasn’t impressed – I was annoyed. The guy had a winking nervous tick, a ticky, nervous sniff, a mouth that didn’t stop providing opinions, and I’d never heard anyone swear like him. I wasn’t a prude or averse to swearing, but he used the word ‘f&#%@*!k’ as a noun, verb, object, adjective, and conjunction. My cynical side figured it was either all an act or the guy just had a massive ego. But after I got over my pre-season introductory teammate evaluations, competitiveness, nerves (aka insecurity), I realized the guy was genuine and genuinely entertaining. Each day he shocked and amused me more.
“Harry, give me a second. I need to call my mom.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
Doug dials the phone, pauses, and then starts talking. “What the f&#%@*!’s going on?” … “F&#%@*!k you.” … “No f&#%@*!n’ way.” … “F&#%@*!k that b&#%@*!h.”
“Who are you talking to?” I asked.
“My mom… F&#%@*!k them, you didn’t let those f&#%@*!s get away with that shit.”
“Seriously, who are you talking to?” I asked again. Doug swore a lot, but this phone call was amping up the ‘f&#%@*!k’ quotient exponentially.
“I’m talking to my mom. Hey mom, Harry doesn’t believe I’m talking to you.”… “He’s the guy I’m rooming with next year.”…“Here, Harry, talk to my mom.”
“Hello?” I spoke into the phone hesitantly, sure that it was some sort of ruse.
“Is this Harry g&#%@*!t!?” The voice of a woman was on the other line.
“Yes.”
“Well, this is Doug’s mom, Tricia. You better have a better f&#%@*!n’ personality than Doug’s last roommate!”
Doug and I made a good team. I was a kid again. With my coaching notebook, I mapped out the season during my Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature course. For anyone who was in that class, you can confirm that it was an excellent use of my time. I had the season detailed in my notebook of knowledge. The drills, practices, lineups, notes on players and strategies of soccer sagacity in my bible of the “beautiful game” were going to make us unbeatable. Doug had actual coaching experience, with his younger brothers’ team.
Then practice started and everything went, just, okay. I began practices with a few jokes because the kids liked it – and it fed my ego. It took Doug twenty more minutes to settle them down. Unbelievably, he did it without a single use of the word f&#%@*!k. I guess he could curb it when necessary.
Once the players were settled, we did a serious of one to a ball skills and one versus one dribbling games. We taught a lot of one vs. one defending, showing players how to take proper angles, move their feet and tackle. Next, it was small sided games, big sided games, and we always finished with fitness. We ran the practices our coaches ran for us and I loved it. I was positive we, in particular I, was doing a great job. After all, it was mostly my plans and the kids loved us. They were getting better, but not as fast as I’d imagined. Trying to figure it out, I thought about everything: was it the line-up, the practice format, or maybe the emphasis of one vs one defending was too prominent? Something needed fixing.
This process continued for a few weeks with tweaks and adjustments. We made acceptable, but not considerable, progress. Doug and I arrived at practice with our plan. We’d greet the kids. I’d try to say a bunch of funny things. The kids would laugh, screw around, Doug would go ballistic, and twenty minutes later we’d start a productive practice. One day as we left training, we both were a bit agitated. Finally, I said what was on our both of our minds: “I’m a little disappointed they aren’t picking up things faster. Maybe we need to change the emphasis a bit.”
Doug responded immediately with some thoughtful advice. “Jesus F&#%@*!g Christ, Harry. Do you know how much f&#%@*!g time you waste?! Do you need to start every G&#%@*!n f&#%@*!g practice getting the little p&#%@*!s all f&#%@*!g riled up? How f&#%@*!g stupid are you? For f&#%@*!s sake, you can’t coach kids like that you f&#%@*!g moron! So how ‘bout you shut your f&#%@*!g piehole and let me start practice next time!”
It’s the first definitive coaching advice I remember – it was quite good.
[1] This is not an opinion but, rather, a fact. Elite scientists from elite Universities conducted over 10,000 elite studies, none which I will reference, on just this subject. Their conclusion: The Green Bay Packers are America’s Elite Team, the elite Vince Lombardi belongs on Bernini’s wall at the Vatican, Lambeau Field is an elite Holy Site and anyone who doesn’t recognize this is not elite and / or mentally ill.
