Personal Narrative: My Football Coach

It all started in 7th grade, our football team was at the time undefeated and we were in our second to last game. We were up by quite a bit and our team was feeling sanguine, our coach didn’t put too much thought into it, and called a run up the middle with our star running back Michael Lundy. He Got the ball and ran for Three short yards then suddenly tripped over a pile of angry, impassioned, irritable teenage boys. Michael had landed wrong and you could see by his expressions he was hurt, his dad came on the field and helped carry him off. We were forced to continue the game without Michael, which wasn’t all that bad because there were only three minutes left in the game. We the Philomath 7th grade braves had won our second to last game

My whole body is completely numb as I set my feet in the torn up, muddy battlefield known as the gridiron. I glance up to the scoreboard we’re up by 3 with 30 seconds to go. My chest is pounding through my shoulder pads and a tingling sensation runs through my arms. “It’s fourth and goal, if they hold them here they’ll win the game!” comes over the loud speaker as I hear hundreds of screaming fans cheer. I can barely see from the sweat dripping down my eyes as I look over to the sideline to get the play call. Coach calls 43 Mike Will Cover 2. This is it. This is what I have worked for. My hands are shaking with anticipation as the quarterback starts his cadence. “Down!” I scan the lineman. “Set!” I know this play it is coming right for me.

One hobby that I enjoy doing is playing soccer. I have been playing soccer since I was in the second grade. I originally started playing soccer for our local AYSO club. Unfortunately, before long I realized that my towns AYSO club wasn't very good. I always seemed frustrated with the AYSO team; therefore, I knew I wanted to switch teams. My family and others watched me play, and they said I was excellent. It was then, that I tried out for the Birch Run Elite travel team. Robert Oberski, a previous AYSO coach, was my new soccer coach. When I first started playing soccer, I was a forward and midfielder; now, I am a defender and midfielder. I have actually played all of the positions on the field, at one point or another. My current coach says

“Once you control the things you can control in your life, everything else will take care of itself.” My wrestling coach would tell me this before every match. This is one of the many things he would tell us that would help not only me but our entire team get mentally prepared for the task at hand. This is just one of the many things he did to enforce himself as the greatest leader in not only my life but the lives of others around me. What exactly makes a great leader? Is a great leader someone who is just good at everything? Not exactly. A great leader to me is someone who can influence others not only by their actions, but by their words.

My concern is the head coach we have for U9-10 kid pitch Unfortunately, I do not know his name because he has not addressed nor communicated with the parents. On the first practice, one of the kids' father (who has coached for the YMCA) started helping with the kids and started coaching because the head coach was not there. This is fine with me. I do know that he has baseball experience. The head coach has let the "assistant coaches", pretty much take over with coaching. The concern I have is my daughter is the only girl on the team. She chose to play baseball this season because she wants the challenge and plus she wants a trophy in all sports. Mr. Osborne, you and I both know, Deziray has determination, confidence, and play just as good as

The mixture of dread and excitement come as I walk onto the court. It’s eight in the morning and as I look around, everyone has a tired look on their face. The parents all have coffee and look half asleep. On the other hand, the coach is pumped up. I slip my shoes on not really noticing what I’m doing. Our first game on a new team. We are expecting a team we have played team before but when they walk in, we get a real shock.

Our hearts had just been ripped out of our chests. We had fought as hard as we could just to come up short on the last second touchdown. We continued on with our heads held high to shake hands with the opposing team because we knew we had fought as hard as we could. I was nearing the end of the line, when the I reached an opposing coach. Not expecting anyone to say anything, I heard a voice talking to me. I heard the man say to me, “Once you get some feet under you, you might be pretty good. Until then, you will just be a piece of shit.”

I chose this particular activity because over the past two weeks, one of our assistant coaches has been really trying to work with us and engaging us in thinking about our teammates as a whole, rather than just ourselves. Each day, she has given us a couple quotes, and talked about leadership. She asked a rhetorical question saying, “Are you willing to go the extra mile for not only your teammates, but yourself. This to me in making me think about not only the big things that are going to happen on the court, but it’s the small things that are going to make it matter why I am performing the information she told me.

As an individual who has an appreciation for the game of football, nothing would be more thrilling to me than playing under those Friday night lights. As a child, I had idolized the players from my home town football team. I’ve always dreamt of one day being in their shoes, playing in front of a crowd full of people. Once I began my high school football career, I was very eager to play Varsity. Little did I know, from freshmen to junior year I would be plagued by injuries that would not allow me to participate. I was on the verge of giving up and quitting football altogether. It would have been simple for me to give up, but I was not going to let my childhood dream and years of commitment go to waste. My senior season, I was able to conquer

Leadership was a word I was not familiar with when I started playing high school softball as a freshman. As the season started I wasn’t even aware that I had a role until the assistant coach said every player has a specific role that will impact the whole team as it progresses. This opened up my mind and made me realize that although I was just a young player who still needs experience in high school games. I was still being relied on by my teammates and coaches on my specific job on the field and the classroom. Although I was frightened with the role I had, I was supported by my family

Regardless of what you decide to become in your life, writing will always find its way to become a part of it. Each and every profession requires at least some degree of writing. Furthermore, the sooner we realize this, the sooner we will be able to accept the simple truth that it is. My dad has coached high school sports for as long as I can remember at four different schools. His job has exposed me to athletics at a young age, and I can still remember being a first-grader wanting nothing more than to be able to wear a football helmet every Autumn Friday night. I was taught many things you would expect to learn from a coach’s son at a young age. Among these are respect, work-ethic, dignity, but most importantly, competitiveness. Sports are

Well, this is my first post and to be completely honest it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to write, but I finally came to a conclusion.

“Oh, sorry Norman.” I mumbled dazed by how blue the brown-haired boy’s eyes were. I stood up breaking eye contact with him and walked off the bus. As I was taking my first step towards the school someone’s foot stuck out in front of me tripping me, I landed face first into the pavement. Snickering came from behind me, I rolled over to see who it was. Please don’t be the Football team.

I have been able to maintain a productive relationship with my figure skating coach despite our drastically different political views. In addition to having a coach/student relationship, we also have a close friendship. Naturally, I had a hard time reconciling our drastically different political viewpoints.

As William Dudley would say, “Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.” Change can have positive results, but constant change can result in less desirable results. After experiencing three different coaches in my four years of high school volleyball at West Burlington, I have concluded that I experienced too much of a good thing which resulted in negative outcomes. If coaches were required to sign a two-year coaching contract, it would restrict the amount of change an athlete and a school faces through the years. A contract would also provide other positives like more confidence, a greater amount of commitment from the players, coach, parents, and community and the ability to develop a stronger program.