I hereby submit my resignation as a youth basketball coach.
It’s a decision that was made simple to make, since my daughter will be too old to play on the teams that needed volunteer coaches. I’d be lying if I said it was an easy decision, since every milestone by my children feels like a step closer to independence and, more selfishly, a step away from needing me.
In the course of coaching two years of youth basketball (the first year more out of a necessity since no one volunteered), I made plenty of memories and learned as many important lessons as I hope I taught.
• The best memories happen when no one else is around.
Obviously we played our games in front of crowds of parents and relatives, and those were fun. I’ll treasure all the time it was just the players and the coaches in a gym, though. I’ve had some of the heartiest laughs of my life after hearing an 11-year-old’s observation about the world.
• Nothing motivates people like a competition.
It never mattered what we wanted to work on, whether it was shooting, rebounding or just dribbling the ball. The moment you turned it into a competition, people were more driven to succeed.
• Competition doesn’t necessarily make all people better.
The flip side is that when you have a winner and a loser, the loser doesn’t necessarily get any better from being beaten by someone better than them at a particular skill. Competition can bring out sloppiness and shortcuts, and you’re not learning good, repeatable habits that way.
• Girls fart.
I already knew this, having four girls in my home, but it bears repeating: Little girls are capable of gaseous outbursts that make you pause what you’re doing and move to a different part of the room.
• Everyone focuses on their part of a loss.
We ended our tournament run with a three-point loss. With a few seconds remaining, the ball ended up in the hands of my daughter, who started to fall over. I tried calling a time out before she tumbled and traveled, but the official didn’t hear me, as my voice was weak with a cold.
Afterward, my daughter thought she cost us the game. I thought I cost us the game. One of the girls fixated on shots she missed in the fourth quarter.
The reality is it wasn’t anyone’s fault. There were dozens of moments throughout the game that could’ve changed the game for us or against us.
• Progress is more satisfying than success.
If you looked at our won-loss record, we had two successful seasons. We won more games than we lost. That’s not what I’ll remember from our time together, though.
I’ll remember how much each girl improved from the start of the first practice through the end of the final game. In all cases, their skills improved dramatically. More importantly, in several cases, their confidence grew markedly.
• They see how you act and learn from it.
Abiding by rules are important to me, and the players knew it. Our league had a rule that everyone played equally, and they knew I had it figure out how to be as fair as possible. They also knew that other teams didn’t follow the letter of the law so closely.
After one game, one of the girls mentioned this to me. She said she was glad we played fairly. She liked being “the good guys.”
• Everyone should end with a victory.
In our last practice together, and probably their last time ever playing basketball in that particular gym, the girls thought we were done with practice. I called them back over to my favorite basket (the one in front of the home team’s bench) and reminded them this might be their last chance to make a basket there.
Each girl on the team kept shooting until she made her self-selected shot, and we all cheered as if she’d just won the game for us.
After the final girl hit hers, we started to walk off the court. I heard the ball hit the floor again and turned around to see the basket go through the hoop again.
“Now I made my last TWO shots here,” she said.
Those are the memories that will keep me happy through my “retirement” from coaching youth basketball.
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