You Can't Save Them All---Hah! (A Commentary on Coaches...)

So...I belong to a couple of groups for volleyball coaches and pay attention to another called Volleytalk.  The coaches group is limited to coaches and trainers by invitation only while Volleytalk is for anyone/everyone interested in volleyball--VT is the 'wild west' of volleyball discussion.

So, this blog started percolating about a week ago.  In one of those forums, someone started posting about 'Why do I coach? Why do I keep doing this?'  ...because there are days, a ton of them actually, where it feels like you're scraping (not even banging) your head against a brick wall.  There were good responses, and it helped me some, too.  Every year you get to the point that it's a grind for a while--practice, travel, recruiting...dealing with drama, fund-raising, tons of things and you wonder that question....just being honest.  If you're reading this, you're nodding anyways.

Well, it reminded me of a conversation I had a dozen years ago with a club director, and in hindsight, I think that's the point I realized I wasn't going to be coaching for that club much longer...

There'd been a few kids that switched clubs--to a club with poor coaching (my opinion) and charging twice as much.  Now, I run my own business, so that if I lose a customer, I always do a ton of hand-wringing...what could I have done to keep that business?  I feel the same way about coaching club.  If you lose a bunch of people--you have to ask why?  Are they valid reasons (because sometimes they are)?  The response I got from the club director was, "Jim, you can't save them all," and so the club continued in the same direction.

Now the problem is bigger--because the club had some kids who weren't improving as quick as I wanted (and as technical director...I thought that was my duty--they were paying $500/kid...by God, they were paying a ton, so they needed to get better).  Some of the kids were laid-back, some had never been taught how to work hard, and some just didn't improve fast--not everyone does...but when I raised the question of their improvement and whether the technical director (me) was doing his job and whether our coaches were teaching the skills--you should know the response I received: "Jim, you can't save them all."

Boy, that steamed me, because I hear that from teachers regularly, too.  "Feh, oh well...I don't care about the kid reading a novel in Math...can't reach them all."  WHY OH WHY would you get into coaching youth or teaching if you weren't committed to reaching everyone in some fashion?

I don't think there's a kid alive who sits there and says "I don't want to get better.  You can't make me."--whether it is school, sports, other activities. Every human enjoys improving--if only I could somehow get good at StarCraft or my vertical jump...  Kids WANT to get better, and they want coaches/teachers who care.

This isn't my first year in volleyball.  Goodness sakes, it's 24 seasons now.  I'm older, maybe wiser, and I know I'm not going to reach everybody--not in a moment, maybe not even over the course of a club or collegiate season.  Heck, as a former classroom teacher, there've been times that a student's reached out to me more than five years later to tell me "Hey--holy crap, you were right."  Those are the moments you live for as a coach/teacher.

And that's what bothered me in that club director's comment that you can't reach everyone.  I know that's true in the short term, but ultimately, as a coach--that's my responsibility, the commitment I made when I chose coaching as an avocation. 

Why do you coach?  Are you coaching to make a difference?  Are you working on leadership and teamwork skills?  Or is it, for you, just about the points on the scoreboard--and if that's the case, why not just play?

Anyways, the thing is--that's what really gets a good coach tired, sometimes tired enough to consider not coaching.  It takes constant effort to do the little things, the invisible things, necessary to help kids, things they'll never see or know about--heck, they'll fight some of them (so will their parents). 

But you can't give up.  Children deserve, they need, that effort.  That's the payoff--that someday, they'll look back and it will click.

So yeah, that club coach was right--if you aren't going to put in the necessary work, you aren't going to save them all.  The thing is...if you put that work in, you can get through to them--every last one of them.