For all you coaches

This goes out to all the coaches out there who, like me, have to perform under some pretty stormy skies at times. I don't literally mean thunder and lightning, although this has been an odd spring with regard to weather. I am actually referring to how much work we do in an average day and how little we have to show for it sometimes.

I often get that old rung out expression, "when it rains it pours" stuck in my head. It seems that administrators, athletes, parents, and even our own families coordinate behind our backs at times and plan a simultaneous dumping of work/torment/guilt for when you are at your busiest. Now, before I go any further, let me first say that my family is great. I love them with everything that I am and I would not trade or change them for the world. However, 3-year olds are nuts and when coupled with a 5-month old... oh man! My wife is a frickin' saint; I don't know how she does it every day. I digress... My average day usually includes four hours of teaching, at least one meeting on my duty-free lunch, a mountain of paper work for something (yesterday it was PE testing forms), 30-40 emails to return, 5-6 phone calls to parents or athletes, a three hour practice, 10-30 minutes of feeling guilty that I had no time to prep for my classes, and finally home to eat, play trains, read stories, and doze off while telling bed-time stories to my son. That is a normal low-volume day and I can handle that just fine. It is those other days that kill me.

How many of you coaches out there do your own meet entries? How many of you have to attend coaches meetings? What about setting up and tearing down track meets? These are the things that can suck the life out of a coach and leave him standing against a wall wondering why God hates him. And it is at these moment that we invariably get that one athlete, you know the one, who will come up, and with no hesitation to consider your current status ask, "What time does the 800m start?" These are the moments that challenge me. It is a small moment. The athlete has no idea that your day has already been invaded by a horde of rampaging stress goblins. Yet the broken blood vessel behind your eye and the clinched fist in your pocket are clearly visible to anyone passing by. So how should a coach react in this situation? We are only human... right? Wrong!

A good coach is not just a normal human. You have to be a little super human. Sorry, that doesn't mean you get to tie on a cape and fly, it just means that you have to constantly measure your actions and unlike many normal people, think before you do anything. I have often wrestled with this, especially this year, when I have been rung ragged more times than a dirty old dish towel. No matter what I may be feeling on a personal level, that does not excuse me from acting like a mentor, even to that athlete with impeccable timing. That directive, however, does not necessarily mean that you have to act happy in this situation. It simply means that whatever you reaction is, it needs to be delivered in a manner that teaches, not torches.

I used to handle this by taking a deep breath, looking the athlete in the eye and answering, "about five O' Clock." That reaction makes me look like a nice guy, but it doesn't teach the kid anything. Those moments are what led me to take the advice of the coaches at Vista Murrieta and put together a handbook for the track program that includes a schedule for every meet. Now my reaction is a calm, "Look at the book."

The message here is simple enough I hope. Preparation is the key to survival. My parent used to say, "Liam, always expect the best, but prepare for the worst." I never fully appreciated that advice until now. Do your best to prepare yourself for all those little moments in advance. You will be a more effectice coach if you can preemtively cut off all those little annoying questions that pop up at times when you are least prepared to handle them. There are still going to be times when you want to throw a chair, but they will occur much less often.