Who We Coach
One of the first steps toward Coaching Excellence is understanding who we actually coach.
The obvious answer is that we coach athletes. Every day, young people walk into our gyms, onto our fields, around our tracks, into our weight rooms, or onto our courts, and we are given the responsibility of helping them improve. We teach technique, develop strength, correct mistakes, create strategies, and prepare them to compete. We spend countless hours trying to help them become better at their sport, and all of that is an important part of coaching.
But if the only person we see standing in front of us is an athlete, we have already limited our ability to coach them well.
There is so much more standing in front of us.
We Coach a Developing Person
For many of us, the athletes entrusted to our care are teenagers or young adults. That distinction matters because we aren't coaching fully formed adults. We are coaching forming human beings.
Their brains are still developing and their identities are still taking shape. They are learning how to manage emotions, relationships, disappointment, pressure, responsibility, success, failure, and expectations. At the same time, they are trying to figure out who they are, where they belong, what they are capable of, and what kind of person they want to become. That's a lot going on inside the same kid we're frustrated with because they forgot their practice jersey for the third time this week.
As coaches, we can easily forget that. An athlete makes an emotional decision, struggles to see the bigger picture, takes correction personally, communicates poorly, or fails to understand consequences that seem incredibly obvious to us. We look at them and wonder, Why don't you get this?
Maybe we need to ask a different question.
How can I help you learn this?
That's an important shift in the mindset of an excellent coach. We aren't simply evaluating what an athlete currently is. We have been given an opportunity to participate in what that young person is becoming.
Once we understand that, mistakes begin to look different. A mistake becomes an opportunity to teach. Conflict gives us a chance to develop communication. Adversity becomes a place to build resilience. Failure can develop humility and perseverance, while success gives us the opportunity to teach gratitude. Even the ordinary responsibilities of being on a team—showing up on time, communicating, fulfilling a role, doing something you don't necessarily want to do—can become opportunities to develop leadership and maturity.
That's why I often refer to athletics as the sport classroom. A classroom exists for learning, and sports give us thousands of opportunities to participate in the formation of another human being. The scoreboard might be the most visible measurement in that classroom, but it certainly isn't the only thing being learned.
We Coach Young Men and Young Women
We also coach young men and young women, and that matters.
I've had the opportunity to coach both boys and girls, and anyone who has spent significant time doing both knows that we can't simply assume every athlete or team will respond the same way. There can be differences in communication, relationships, feedback, conflict, team dynamics, and the development of trust. Of course, we have to be careful not to turn general tendencies into stereotypes. Every athlete is an individual, and Coaching Excellence requires us to learn the person standing in front of us.
One phrase that has helped me think about this is that girls often connect to play, while boys often play to connect. For many female athletes, establishing trust and connection can have an enormous influence on their ability to compete freely. For many male athletes, the activity itself can become the environment through which relationships and trust develop. Neither approach is better or weaker than the other. They simply remind us that coaching is deeply relational.
This means the excellent coach has to ask more than, What does this athlete need technically? We also have to ask, Who is this person, and what does this person need from me in order to grow?
That question will become even more important later when we talk about how we coach. For now, it's enough to recognize that Coaching Excellence can't happen without knowing the people God has actually placed in front of us.
We Coach Someone's Future
The 15-year-old volleyball player standing in front of you today will not always be a 15-year-old volleyball player. The 17-year-old linebacker will not always be a linebacker. The point guard will eventually take off the uniform. The runner will cross a finish line for the final time. The golfer will eventually play a round that doesn't count toward a team score, and the swimmer will one day climb out of the pool and move into another season of life.
Sport ends.
That reality should dramatically influence how we coach because the young people in our programs are becoming future husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, neighbors and community leaders. They are future doctors, lawyers, educators, business owners, real estate agents, civil servants, tradesmen, coaches, and countless other professionals. Some may even be called to religious life or ministry and one day become responsible for helping lead others toward holiness.
Think about that for a moment. Sitting in your locker room right now could be someone's future spouse. Someone's future father or mother. Someone's future boss, teacher, coach, or pastor.
Who do you want that person to become?
Suddenly, teaching an athlete how to respond when things don't go their way doesn't seem like such a small part of our job. Teaching honesty, discipline, sacrifice, communication, responsibility, and service matters because those qualities aren't only necessary for good athletes. They're necessary for good people.
The athlete who learns to communicate through conflict will need that skill in marriage. The athlete who learns to show up when they don't feel like showing up will need that discipline as a parent and professional. The athlete who learns to take responsibility instead of making excuses will need that lesson in almost every meaningful relationship they have. The athlete who learns to sacrifice personal desires for the good of the team is beginning to understand something about service that can influence the way they someday lead a family, workplace, church, or community.
Those lessons will follow them long after the scoreboard is turned off.
Most of Our Athletes Will Go Pro in Something Else
For years, the NCAA has promoted the idea that the overwhelming majority of college athletes will “go pro in something other than sports.” I've always loved that message because it communicates something coaches desperately need to remember: for almost everyone we coach, competitive athletics has an expiration date.
Most of our athletes will never earn a paycheck playing their sport. They won't have their names announced in professional stadiums, sign endorsement deals, or see people wearing jerseys with their names across the back. Even many incredibly successful high school and college athletes will eventually wake up one morning and realize that their competitive athletic career is over.
But every one of them is becoming something.
That's what makes athletics such a powerful classroom. If sport is merely about producing better athletes, then much of our impact is temporary. But if we understand sport as a classroom for human formation, the impact of our coaching can last for generations.
The discipline developed in your program may someday make an athlete a better employee or leader. The perseverance they develop may carry them through a difficult season in their marriage. The selflessness required to become a great teammate may make them a better parent. The courage developed through competition may help them stand for something that matters when doing so is difficult. Being held accountable may prepare them to accept responsibility when making excuses would be easier.
We may never see those moments. There probably won't be statistics attached to them, trophies handed out for them, or posts celebrating them on social media.
But they may be some of the greatest victories of our coaching careers.
We Coach an Eternal Soul
There is still another answer to the question Who do we coach? For the Christian coach, it is the most important answer of all.
We coach an eternal soul made in the image and likeness of God.
Before that young person was an athlete, he or she was a child of God. Before the rankings, statistics, scholarships, trophies, starting positions, wins, and losses, there was a person created intentionally by God and for God. Long after their athletic career ends, that truth will remain.
Every athlete we coach will eventually face realities far greater than anything they encounter in competition. Trophies collect dust. Records are broken or forgotten. Uniforms get put away. Even the physical bodies we spend so much time training are temporary. Death and judgment await every one of us.
That can sound uncomfortable in a culture that works hard to avoid talking about either one, but Christianity has never asked us to ignore eternity. Quite the opposite. Remembering eternity helps us understand the significance of the present.
So as Christian coaches, we should be willing to ask ourselves a difficult question:
Am I preparing this young person only for their next competition, or am I helping prepare them for eternity?
That doesn't mean every practice becomes a Bible study. It doesn't mean we stop pursuing championships, demanding excellence, correcting mistakes, or pushing athletes beyond what they currently believe they're capable of accomplishing. In fact, I would argue that we should do those things extremely well.
It simply means we understand them in their proper order.
Winning matters, but winning isn't ultimate. Athletic development matters, but it isn't ultimate. Playing time matters to our athletes, but it isn't ultimate. Scholarships can create wonderful opportunities, but they aren't ultimate. All of those things have value, but there is something much bigger happening.
God has entrusted another human being to our care for a brief season of that person's life. We've been given an opportunity to influence how they see themselves, how they treat others, how they respond to adversity, how they pursue excellence, and ultimately how they understand the purpose of the gifts God has given them. That is sacred work.
See the Whole Person
When we put all of this together, the answer to Who do we coach? becomes much bigger than it first appeared.
Yes, we coach an athlete, but we also coach a developing human being. We coach a young man or young woman who is becoming someone's future husband or wife, father or mother. We coach future professionals, leaders, neighbors, coaches, teachers, and servants of their communities. And ultimately, we coach a person made in the image and likeness of God with an eternal destiny.
If we truly believe that, our athletes should be able to feel it.
They should know that their value to us isn't determined by how many points they score, how fast they run, how much weight they lift, or whether they help us win games. That doesn't mean we stop caring about performance. Part of loving an athlete well is helping them develop their gifts and holding them accountable to the standards necessary for excellence. But we develop those gifts because we care about the person who possesses them—not simply because those gifts can help our team win.
Athletes know the difference. They know when they're being treated like a commodity, when their relationship with a coach depends on their production, and when they're primarily viewed as a stat line, roster spot, recruiting piece, or tool to help a coach accomplish a goal. They also know when a coach genuinely cares about them.
And when an athlete knows, Coach cares about all of me, a different kind of trust begins to develop.
That trust doesn't require us to lower our standards. In fact, I've found that it often allows us to raise them. When athletes understand that correction comes from someone invested in their development rather than someone simply frustrated with their performance, they receive coaching differently. Accountability begins to look less like punishment and more like formation.
They trust differently. They respond differently. And very often, they compete differently.
This is where Coaching Excellence begins. Before we decide what to coach, we have to understand who we coach.
The person is always bigger than the player.
The young people standing in front of us are so much more than athletes. We aren't simply coaching today's player. We are helping form tomorrow's person—and preparing an eternal soul for something far greater than sport.
-Coach Field
