Coaching the Kids

When I was a teenager, we were always looking for a place to play pickup basketball. There was an outdoor court at Mr. Don P. Smith’s house. Same at the Junior High. We had “ways” to get into two gyms in town that had long been closed down.

Two of my grandchildren are playing Parks & Rec basketball this year. One set of games is at the old Everett School gym, the other at old Springbrook. I appreciate the fact that our local governments saw fit to preserve these valuable assets which are of greatest value to our young folks. But this column isn’t about facilities but about people.

Just yesterday, I watched Grandkid #2 playing basketball in the Parks & Rec league at Springbrook.  One of the referees was Frederick St. Hill who is a high school official for both football and basketball yet here was, on a Saturday morning patiently calling the game and helping these youngsters understand the game.

Later, I watched Grandkid #4 playing at Everett and was thrilled to see Joey Winders and Mark McGill as the referees. The children of these two men were long since finished with youth sports yet here they were, on a Saturday morning, doing the thankless job of refereeing basketball for 8 and 9 year-old kids. That is an amazing level of dedication to youth sports in this community.

I’ve known Joey for a lot of years. We first met at Maryville Little League. Joey had started coaching girls’ t-ball there in 1982. Now this is important—Joey wasn’t a parent coaching his kid’s team. Joey didn’t even have girls. He actually didn’t even have any children at that time. He was simply that dedicated to promoting youth sports in this community.

And he’s still at it. He has coached the Maryville Southerners in the Parks & Rec youth football program for 33 years.  He coached them before his sons got there and he’s coaching them long after they’re done. He does it for the kids.

Don Sentell is another example of selflessness.  Don has coached youth football for 55 years! During that time, he has coached multiple generations. That’s an amazing record of service.

Don’s philosophy is that having a parent coach a team isn’t always the best option. He seeks out assistant coaches that are interested in young athletes but who aren’t parents of his players. Junior Masingo has coached with Don for 51 of those years.

Ricky Maples is another one still coaching. And he never had children of his own. What he has is a legacy of being a part of the lives of a lot of other people’s kids. I coached with Ricky when my own son was playing and am grateful for the experience.

I know for a fact that it would be impossible to have youth sports teams without parents willing to coach. I am convinced that it can help make you a better parent. I think it did that for me. If you look around, there are men and women in our community that are dedicated to providing the youth sports experience that is so vital to the development of our children. These that I mention have just gone way above and beyond the call of duty.

But if you are a parent/coach, let me give you a little advice. Be more teacher and less coach. Teach fundamentals. Teach teamwork. If you yell, you’re doing it wrong. Treat everyone fairly, especially your own kids. Let everybody play.

I had a parent file a complaint on me one time for playing a handicapped player as a goalie. I was “destroying the integrity of the game.” The youngster wanted to play goalie. I let him. It remains one of my prouder moments.

Imagine that you’re the worst player on the team. Be the coach that you wish you had.

Shaped by My Hometown

I was inspired this week by Coach Dabo Swiney’s words offered during a press conference following his football team’s national championship game. (Yes…I’m a huge Clemson fan. You might remember that my son played football there.) He talked about how his hometown of Pelham, Alabama shaped him.

I grew up nearby, in Loudon, Tennessee. If you don’t know Loudon, it is a town of about 5000 and the County Seat of Loudon County. I was shaped by growing up in a small town where I could leave the house in the morning on my bicycle with the simple instruction to be home by dinner. If I ever got out of line, somebody would tell Mama.

I was shaped by my parents. My dad was a little man with only a 6^th grade education but who worked hard until his heart failed him. My mom was this really focused little lady who went to work in a factory when my dad couldn’t. Their work ethic shaped my career.

I was shaped by travel. We didn’t have much and we hardly ever stayed in a motel, picking friends or family to stay with, but I saw the St. Louis Arch being built and Niagara Falls and Daytona Beach while still a child.

I was shaped by my church. My earliest memories all seem to be about the First Baptist Church in Loudon, Tennessee. I thought it was this grand place yet now I find it quite small. Reverend Rainwater was this distinguished man who taught me that God is good.

His wife was a schoolteacher who holds the distinction of being the only teacher to ever spank me. She thought I wasn’t hurrying into the bleachers in the gym quickly enough and gave me a swat on the butt. I must have been 8 or 9 at the time. Probably not a real spanking yet it has stayed with me.

I was shaped by Scouts. First by Cub Scouts and then later by Boy Scouts and Explorer Scouts. Mrs. Patton was our Cub Scout leader. I remember her as a gracious lady, one who lived on the hill and whose husband wore a tie to work but who treated everyone the same. She gave me an example of dignity and equity.

Boy Scouts opened a lot of doors and gave me some memorable experiences. I had been to Boundary Waters Canoe Area twice by age 15 because of Scouts. I was exposed to good men and the outdoors because of Boy Scouts. I learned leadership skills because of Scouting.

I was shaped by football. I was a high school sophomore, lacking self confidence and being a huge underachiever when I overheard the high school football coach tell a bystander that “he can be a good one if he will work at it.”

I learned that if you want something bad enough and are willing to work hard enough at it, you can achieve it. I was never told that I could do great things. Instead I was told “people like you don’t go to college.” My football coach gave me a very different message. He is still my hero today.

I was shaped by my friends. I picked well. Ronnie McNabb was my best friend through most of our years growing up and was later my college roommate. Teddy Randolph was the third piece to our trio and a great guy. We were inseparable for years.

From them I learned to enjoy life. Maybe we did some things we would rather not be known but there is no doubt that all the time that we spent together helped me become the person that I am today. They stayed in our hometown and have built good, solid lives there. I moved away and it worked out pretty well for me too.

I’ll never be a Maryville native but I love it here and consider myself as much a part of the fabric of this community as anybody who doesn’t have deep roots here. It has shaped me as an adult and given me opportunities I would never have had anyplace else. Thank you.

Join a Gym?

If you know me, you know I’m not real big on New Year’s Resolutions. I pursue health with a dogged persistence. Year round. But maybe Resolutions work for you. Great. All I ask is that you don’t be one of those people that joins a gym in January, only to fail to show up in February.

Let me put it another way…I’d love to see you join a gym in January. Any gym. Sure, I have my preferences but that opinion doesn’t count for much. It’s important to get started. But it’s more important to stay with it.

It doesn’t matter much what you do—just do something. Not everybody can walk/run for exercise. Not everybody can ride a bike. Not everybody wants to lift weights or hike in the mountains. But you’ve got to find something. You’ve got to find your thing. Something you will continue to do. Again, it matters little what you do but that you do something.

Move. Lift. Stretch. Live. And if you can find a way to have fun doing it, well then you will be much more likely to continue to do it.

I played basketball for most of my life. Played until I was 59. I loved to play. If you’re old enough, you will know what I mean when I say I was a “Basketball Jones.” In times of stress, I could play basketball and all that stress fell away. It kept me moving. I played until way after it could be said “he’s good for a man his age.” It became more of a “can you believe he’s still playing basketball?”

Finally my knees betrayed me and I knew my basketball days were over. Fortunately, I had the bicycle to fall back on and turned my passion to the bike. The bicycle was not so hard on my knees. I found my way to have fun while exercising.

It’s sort of like the old cliché about work:  If you can’t tell whether it is work or play, you’ve got it made. Same thing with exercise. If it is always work, you can’t/won’t sustain it. There has to be some element of play to it, some element of joy in what you are doing.

Take hiking in the mountains for example. There are trails that you can be on in 20 minutes from downtown Maryville. Gorgeous trails. All it takes is a good pair of boots and the right clothes, most of which are in your closet. Never been to White Oak Sink? You’ve missed out.

Don’t want to ride a bike on the road? The Greenbelt was originally built for bicycles. And the Cades Cove Loop Road (11 miles) is closed at various times to motorized vehicles, making for a perfect biking venue.

Those that are playing Pickleball tell me that I would enjoy it. I just don’t need another thing to do. If you walk the course, golf can be a bit of exercise. Riding a cart, swinging a club, then riding the cart again to your ball just doesn’t cut it. Sorry.

I’m not saying that you have to always have fun exercising. Sometimes you need to work harder, get out of your comfort zone to get better. Sometimes you have to train so that you can enjoy what you do.

The other huge thing to do is to find a partner. Or several of them. Hiking alone is great for some but is better with somebody. Same for biking. The accountability of agreeing to meet someone to exercise will get you out there when you might not feel like it. Or when the weather is questionable.

If you want to live long and stay healthy, you’ve got to get out there and move your body. Resolve now to start down that path and then focus on staying on it. Don’t waste your time by joining a gym in January only to sleep in during February.

Parents Out of Control

I was sitting with one of my granddaughters last week, watching one of her siblings play basketball. Behind us was a dad who yelled at his son the entire game. He was mostly encouraging, but called constantly to his son to give him tips and encourage him to “take it to the rim.” This dad never let up. He yelled The. Entire. Game.

The week before, I had been at a different game, again involving a grandchild. It wasn’t a particularly pretty game. The officials were doing a good job, stopping for teaching moments along the way. I happen to know both officials quite well. They are good men and were taking their Saturday mornings to help out. It would have been impossible to call every foul and whistle every infraction. We would have been there all day.

Sometime late in the game, the coach for one team was absolutely certain that his best player had been fouled. He screamed and gestured in a manner that would have made Bobby Knight proud. I didn’t know him from Adam but I was embarrassed.

Last week I worked a high school basketball game. It was highly competitive and came down to a last second shot but along the way, the visiting team was hit with 5 technical fouls, their best player was ejected, and one of their fans was escorted from the gym.

Here’s what I observed—their students, fans, parents, and school staff members spent the entire game screaming at the officials and the home team. Yelling obscenities, making hand gestures, and generally being out of control. No one should be surprised that the players on the court demonstrated such bad behavior. They were surrounded by it.

At some time, school administrators for that school should have stepped in and taken control of the student section. They didn’t. For all I know, they were part of it. I actually saw a teacher join the students at one point. Adults should know better.

Most of my sideline work is at football and baseball, where you are insulated from the comments of parents and fans. I will have a hard time if I eventually retire—I won’t be able to sit in the stands. When (not if) somebody says something about somebody’s kid or one of the coaches…well…I’m not sure what I will do but it won’t be pretty.

That dad needs to let his kid play. He needs to let him be coached and be part of the team. His kid was really good but that is no excuse. After the game, I saw the kid sobbing uncontrollably. I can only speculate why.

That coach needs to just calm down. He will find as he gets older (and wiser) that it isn’t that important. He will find that it’s far more important for his kids to develop motor skills, to learn how to be a good teammate, to understand what it is to be coachable.

He was probably the dad of one of the players on the team. I know it is hard to find coaches. Heck, the first full soccer game I saw, I coached. They for sure couldn’t find anyone better. But best case scenario is for a non-parent to coach those teams. Yeah, I know how hard, if not impossible, that is.

Do your job as a parent. Show love. Teach. Encourage. Support. Wipe the tears. Don’t make excuses nor allow excuses. Your child’s future depends on it. In life and in athletics.

One More Chat

I don’t want this to seem dark and gloomy. I want it to be something else entirely. But some life experiences this week caused me to think of my dad, who died in 1997.

Maybe it was the family gathered for Thanksgiving. Maybe it was when I sat with a dad that had just lost his son. I spent some time with my own son and that was part of it. Maybe that’s just the way these things work.

My dad was a simple man. He dropped out of school after the 6^th grade to go to work in a factory to support his family after his own dad had died. Think about that. Can you imagine sending your 12 year old off to work?

He was 16 when the Great Depression hit in 1929. Work was scarce so he moved from his hometown of Sweetwater to Knoxville, where he had a single room in the basement of a building and worked at jobs whenever he could find them.

He married my mom in 1941 and was the “old guy” at 30 in his Navy unit when he went off to war in 1943, serving in the south Pacific on the USS New Jersey. After the war, he moved to Loudon and got a job at the hosiery mill there. When a new factory opened, he moved there for better opportunities.

He had his first heart attack at age 45, and was forced into retirement ten years later. My summer job all through college was at that same factory. It was hot, nasty work but it paid well.

What I heard from those guys at that factory that had worked with my dad was that Carl Black was a hard worker. They told me that he always seemed to be going 100 miles per hour…that he often did the job of two people and looked for more.

He raised bees and strawberries, always had a huge garden, and each fall would help local farmers kill hogs to get some of the meat. He was always tinkering in his workshop and seemed to be able to fix anything. He was proud of his ice cream freezer, home-made and one of the first in our neighborhood to run off an electric motor. I was never hungry and I was never cold.

I guess I got my work ethic from him. I’m pretty sure I got my ambition from him. Not attending college wasn’t an option for me. I’ve wondered aloud how that came to be. I now realize it was probably from my dad, who never had that opportunity.

He was a little man, 5’6” and 145 pounds at his biggest. Sports were never an option for him but he became my biggest supporter in whatever I did. Because of his heart problems, he could never attend my football games. Doctors decided it was too much excitement for him. But I know he was always sitting at home alone, listening to the radio broadcast of my games.

Because of the blood thinners he took for almost half his life, he was always cold. He loved the hottest days of summer when he was finally comfortable. The last good memories I have of him are sitting with him in church and putting my always warm hands on his cold hands, then napping in the afternoon with him in the apartment he and my mom shared. He was gone the next day.

Like everyone, I would like one more visit with my dad, one more time to talk to him. I don’t have to think hard to know what I would say. I would tell him about the wondrous things that his grandchildren have done and introduce him to my own grandchildren. I would tell him about my life since his death. I know he would be proud that I went back to school and got my doctorate. Being able to call me Dr. Joe Black would have been his proudest moment.

But I would have only one question for him. “Dad, did I do OK?” Hug on somebody today.

Finding Your Place

I have a friend who is agonizing over how to best raise her son. (Haven’t a lot of us been down that road?) In particular, she wants to make sure that he is an active youngster and, as a result of that, becomes an active adult.

The problem is that he’s not really interested in sports. Nothing seems to click for him. She has introduced him to lots of things. Baseball. Martial arts. Gymnastics. Flag football. He has shown little interest in any of those.

Oh, he’s an active kid. He goes 90 miles an hour most of the time with lots of different interests. He certainly seems to love life. Still, this mom wants to make sure she is doing the right things for him.

We have a similar story with my own grandchildren. One seems to really enjoy running but it’s too soon to decide if that’s her sport and definitely too early to focus on just one thing. Another seems to have a lot of talent on the soccer field but is likely to play everything available to him.

I’ve introduced some of them to mountain biking and a couple really show potential there as well. I mentioned one of the grands last week who has really taken an interest in soccer. But I mistakenly said she was giving up ballet. She’s not. She’s another one that is likely to do lots of different things.

One set of grandkids have become quite good at hiking, camping, and backpacking. That is, after one of them got over thinking about hiking as just walking (and he didn’t see the point in that).

I’ve told the story of my own kids here a couple of times. My son was always likely to be a football player. He towered over kids his own age from an early age. Still does. And football is sort of the family thing. Before football though, he was into gymnastics, baseball, basketball, and soccer.

I always thought my daughter would end up as a basketball player. She loved softball too. But then she discovered volleyball as a high school sophomore and that was it. That was her sport.

My point is this: It is not necessary to pick a sport early and stick to it. No…I’ll correct that: It is a huge mistake to pick a sport early and stick to it.

Travel ball for six year olds? I’m strongly against it. Position coaches and personal trainers at 10? Ridiculous. You think your kid is the next star quarterback? And he’s 8? There’s no way you can know that.

Let them play everything. Make sure it is fun for them. It is important for them to have some success at whatever they are doing—that’s what builds a passion for a game. But for younger kids, it is not important at all to win championships and go undefeated.

Let them be on a team so they learn teamwork. Let them be coached by someone other than yourself so that they learn how to be coachable. If the coach doesn’t recognize their extraordinary talent and keeps them on the bench, don’t blame the coach. Help your kid to get better. It will all work out in the long run.

Help them find their way, not yours. Open doors for them but don’t drag them through that door. Sometimes you don’t even need to hold their hand when they walk through that door. Let them be a part of the world so that they learn how to deal with the world.

Give them opportunities and they will find their way. Give them experiences that are positive and promote movement and they will seek that path.

Role Models

I took my youngest granddaughter to a soccer game recently. It was the MHS Lady Rebels Sub-State game against Science Hill that they won 3-0, qualifying them for the State Tournament.

This is the second time she’s joined me on the sidelines of a soccer game. She loves soccer. She watches the game closely. She’s 7 and just decided to quit ballet to spend more time on soccer. But this isn’t a story about the soccer game. This story is about role models.

Before the game, at the playing of the National Anthem, the MHS soccer team stood at attention, with their right hand over their heart and their left hand behind their back. My granddaughter and I stood too, facing the flag with our right hand over our hearts. I saw my granddaughter look at the line of girls in front of her, all of them with their left arm held behind their back. Slowly, she did the same.

I didn’t want to disrespect the National Anthem but I knew I had to have a photograph of that. I snuck my phone out and almost without looking, took a snapshot of the scene before me. I had no idea if it was any good at all until I looked later.

Oh. My. Goodness. It’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words. This one spoke volumes, at least to me. These high school girls are role models, sometimes when they least expect it.

You never know what little person is looking at you, not just learning how to play a game but also how to behave, how to talk, how to walk, even how to stand attention at the playing of our National Anthem.

The granddaughter has a special affection for Lady Rebel Emma Rice. She took a few private soccer lessons from Emma this fall. I’ve known Emma for a while now and I can tell you that there is no one out there that I would prefer over Emma to teach her how to play soccer and be a teenager.

Emma gets it. She is passionate about the game and is always giving 100% but she also seems to have a good grasp on what it’s really all about. Same thing for Karly Wolford. I’ve watched Karly over the last couple of years and she is one of my all-time favorites. She’s a triplet with two brothers and she loves those brothers beyond measure.

Abbie Kolarik is one of those Lady Rebels that I’ve known most of her life. Always polite, she moves with grace and style and I can think of no one that I would prefer my grandchildren emulate than her. I saw Grace Oliver once handle what could have been awkward social situation with maturity and…well…grace.

So here’s the thing…you may not know it, but somewhere, sometime, little eyes are watching you. You are a role model for somebody.

If you find it difficult to always be on your best behavior, to always be polite, to never use language that you wouldn’t want everyone to hear, to always be the best version of yourself, then maybe it makes your life harder.

If you want to be a positive influence on those around you, if you aspire to always make good decisions, then accepting the concept that you are a role model for someone can make life easier.

This role model thing is either an opportunity or a burden. But good or bad, never forget that someone is watching you, wanting to be you.