"The Undervalued Importance of High School Coaches"

A recent experience by someone very close to me has really made me think about something that I feel is often overlooked by people, especially high school administrators. We, the public, get into so many discussions and debates regarding the importance of teachers in the school system and how underpaid and underappreciated they are. I’m not here to debate that topic. That is a discussion for another day. My issue is with the situation we too often have with the attitude and carelessness in the hiring of athletic coaches at scholastic institutions. Why do we often give these jobs to teachers who are totally unqualified to lead an athletic team simply because the teachers’ union says we must do so? Why do we give teachers good salaries and great benefits yet we throw a couple thousand dollar stipend toward most high school coaches?  I will argue that a good coach will have far greater impact on an adolescent’s life than any single teacher ever will. I am sorry but I have never heard someone say about his or her math or science teacher, “He was like a second father to me.” Again, I take nothing away from the teachers out there who work hard at helping kids. My question is, why don’t we put more of an emphasis on the hiring of good athletic coaches who will teach kids lessons in work ethic, discipline, mental toughness, focus, handling adversity and many other skills that will carry a person so much further towards success than any subject class ever will? How many times do we give a coaching job to a teacher that decides he or she could use the extra money regardless of that person’s qualifications? We are robbing children of the life altering education that they could be receiving from someone that is more qualified to lead them. You wouldn’t hire someone unqualified to teach a physics class at your school so why would you do so with a coach? Coaches are teachers too and I believe that they are the most important teachers we have. I was very blessed to have learned valuable life lessons from coaches such as Paul Lombardo, Mark Petersen, and Rich Clifford during my high school playing days. I want to see other student-athletes have the opportunities that I had. I understand that no matter what you do there is always going to be some unhappy kids and parents. Someone is always going to have a problem with your X’s and O’s or how you decide to divide your playing time. But when a team is in total chaos in and out of the playing arena because of a total lack of leadership then that is a problem. Unfortunately, it is a problem that I have seen firsthand both in my high school days and now that I am on the outside looking in. I’ve seen everything, from coaches that don’t have the slightest clue about the fundamentals of the sport that they coach to not having the maturity to handle the player/parent situations that arise often stemming from the ineptitude of their methods.

I’m sure that this blog is going to draw some harsh reaction from some, especially those who misinterpret the message. It is not meant to insinuate that teachers are not important or that all teachers who are given coaching jobs are automatically unqualified. I will point out that all three coaches previously named who had a positive impact on my life were also teachers. However, I was very lucky that when Coach Clifford retired from coaching baseball that Coach Lombardo was brought in from outside the school district and the job was not just handed to a teacher inside the district who was in no way ready for the responsibility. To this day, I believe that he is the single best head coach that I ever had, high school or college. They say good coaching is getting the best from the least and no one did that better than he did. I did learn some about the game but I learned so much more about life and the keys to success. All I want is for the kids of today, especially at my alma mater Cassadaga Valley, to be given the opportunity to have the same experiences that I had. Unfortunately, I know some of them are not. I just want to see much more attention given to importance of getting the right people in these positions to impact young lives.