A kid on the other team had a brother who had an intellectual disability, and my teammates were teasing him from their seats on the bench. My dad, our head coach, heard their cackling and charged into the dugout from coaching the bases and gave my teammates a tongue lashing. The teasing stopped. After the game he talked with us about why what our teammates had done was wrong. Should have been obvious, right? But 11-year-olds accustomed to casually hearing derogatory terms for the intellectually disabled thrown around at the ballfield, playground, and other places may not have ever considered such words or actions to be wrong. Dad made clear that it was. It was a lesson in empathy.
Like a lot of kids, I was obsessed with sports growing up. Played all of them, watched all of them, read about all of them. Of the hundreds of days and thousands of hours I spent at practices and games, the events of that July evening stuck with me more than anything else a coach said. Is that influenced by the fact it was my dad? Of course. But more importantly, it was because he was my coach.
Remember that years from now the children you coach won’t remember much, if anything, about the X’s and O’s, techniques, or other parts of their youth sports experience. But if you do it right, they’ll remember that you were a good person and helped them become a good one too.
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