The Coach's Kid

Life is full of no win situations, but in my experiences there aren't many situations trickier than coaching your own kid or being the coach's son. We've all seen the worse case scenario where the head coach puts his kid in the middle of the lineup or at shortstop over kids who are more talented. The coach who openly asks the other kids why they can't be as good or as smart as his own son. On the flip side there is the coach who is agonizingly hard on his own kid, to the point where you want to go out on the field and tell the boy or girl that they're doing just fine. You wonder if the kid enjoys playing the sport because of the constant scrutiny and verbal abuse they endure every time they practice or play. Those are the images that typically come to our mind when we think of father and son coach/player relationships. A good number of us have been on teams like that before, or maybe we have been that player or coach. Yet, all across this country there are thousands of other scenarios that play out on a daily basis between coaches and their kids. Scenarios and relationships that very few people in sports can ever understand or appreciate.

Growing up my own father was very involved in all the sports I played. In fact, every sport I played he was either the head coach or assistant coach at some point in my life. There was nothing better than getting to ride to the games with your best friend and get extra access to a practice field or a gym that other kids didn't have. Plus, when your dad is the coach he has all the team equipment, he gets the uniforms first, and he can explain things on a level that other parents cannot.

When I was very young I was a pretty decent athlete. My dad would always take me to get extra practice whenever I wanted. No matter what baseball team I played for I was always the best pitcher. During basketball season I was always the best shooter on the team. Playing soccer I was a good mid-fielder because I could run forever and I always knew where to be on the field both offensively and defensively. As a coach's son, I was used to being pushed and yelled at. That was just normal. That's what all coaches did. It was normal to be told what you did wrong. It was normal to not celebrate the success, but to evaluate your weaknesses. At least that's what I thought.

It wasn't until I hit the middle school years that I started to understand and live through the difficulties of being the coach's kid. My dad was always tough on his teams. He demanded discipline, focus, and toughness from all of his players. I was used to this and could deal with it, but not all of my teammates could. Eventually some of my friends were a little leery to come to my house if my dad was going to be home. Some of the guys my dad was hardest on at practice would talk behind my back about him. At one point a couple of players didn't like a disciplinary decision my dad made, so the next few weeks at school they would constantly tell me they were going to kill my dad.

At that point I realized the other side of having my dad as a coach. Suddenly I noticed every time he was extra hard on me or a teammate. I felt like I didn't get the praise or credit I deserved. I started to dread the car rides home because I knew all of my mistakes would be critiqued. When he would throw his hat to the ground or yell in the locker-room, it would be just one more things the kids would joke around about the next week at school. I just wanted to be like the other kids who got dropped off at practice and could play just for fun. When I was a kid it was great sticking around after games or practices to listen to my dad talk to others about the team, the league, or just sports stuff in general. Now I just wanted to go home. Maybe it's all a normal part of growing up. Maybe I was just soft and couldn't take it. Maybe as I was getting older and other kids were getting much bigger and stronger than me, so I had to find an excuse, but sports weren't as much fun anymore.

During one of my last full baseball seasons my shoulder really began to hurt. I would occasionally mention the pain to one of my parents, but it was often dismissed as growing pains. Yet, something inside me knew that things weren't right. It felt like I had a knot in my shoulder that I just couldn't quite get to go away. When I would throw I had a shooting pain that would cause my whole arm to tingle. Suddenly I went from being the best pitcher to a kid who struggled to throw strikes. No matter what I tried I couldn't get the pain and tingling to go away, so I finally confessed to my head baseball coach that I just couldn't throw without pain. Suddenly I went from pitching and playing shortstop every game to playing the outfield. At that point my father was more of a part time assistant, but I remember him making lots of suggestions and asking me to stick with it. My shoulder hurt when I would swing the bat, so I wasn't even having my typical season at the plate. I knew that I was letting a lot of people down, but for some reason I stopped loving the sport and wanted to get away from it. I'm not blaming him, but I think having him as my coach or involved all of the time just weighed on me too much. I was too scared to tell him or anyone what was really wrong with me, so I just said that I didn't want to play anymore.

One of my last great baseball memories was at a practice one day late in that season. I had always been able to switch hit a little bit, but had never done it in games. One practice my dad was serving as the lead coach and I got into the left-handed batter's box. He told me to get back to the other side and stop screwing around. I remember telling him to just give me one pitch and I'd prove to him I could hit left handed. Somewhat out of character he obliged my request, and to this day I think the hardest ball I ever hit in my life was that one ball my dad threw me during batting practice. It was only one pitch because I smoked a line drive off of his inner thigh that dropped him on the spot. I still remember the bruise he wore for more than a week like it was yesterday.

Now I didn't write this entry to bash my dad. He and I are best friends to this day, and I am the hard-working person that I am because of the discipline that he installed in me at a young age. I learned a lot about toughness and how to handle criticism from him. However, I also learned the tough side of the father/coach relationship. In fact, I vowed to my wife when our kids were young that I would never coach them in sports because I didn't want them to endure any of the things that I did. I wanted them to be able to listen and learn from other adults, and more importantly I just wanted to be a dad in the stands.

Around this same time in my life a basketball coaching position became available at the school I was teaching at. Innocently enough I applied for the position and got the job coaching 8th grade boys basketball. Ah...my first ever coaching job. I was extremely fortunate to have a great mentor who really taught me all aspects of coaching. He taught me how to push players and other coaches, how to be organized, and how to build a program. He taught me to always seek to do better and to continue learning.

As soon as I started coaching I fell in love with it. Some of these kids I had in class, but if I didn't I would see them in the hallways. These were relationships I had never quite experienced before. Suddenly I became immersed with coaching. I would roll right from my games or practices to the JV or Varsity practices. Once my season was over I would become the top assistant on the varsity. There were over 40 kids who all viewed me as coach, and I gave each and every one of them my equal time. I could coach the games or practices without any bias or distraction. If I was harder on one kid than the others, it was because it was what I thought needed to be done, it wasn't personal.

Eventually over time my own kids started getting older and more involved in sports. Living 30 minutes from where I coached, my own kids didn't get to come around too often. So when I stopped coaching basketball at that school my wife suggested that I help coach my oldest son's baseball team. She said it would mean a lot to him. Plus, she reminded me of how critical I always was regarding my kids' coaches anyways.

So reluctantly as we plunged into the world of travel baseball I plunged into the world of coach my own kid for the first time. It didn't take long before I realized that I hated it. Within minutes of the first practice I realized that my son wasn't one of the best there, and I quickly began to panic. How could I be the coach if my son wasn't one of the best on the team? Those two things have to go hand in hand right? I remember I pushed my son and we worked tirelessly to get better, but he still wasn't one of the best kids. At workouts I would be doing something with a large group of kids, but one eye was always on my son. I would point out every mistake that he made. After games I wouldn't praise him for the good things that he had done, I would critique the things he could have done better. The low point came when we were driving home after his team had won. He was happy and talking about the game when I blurted out that he needed to get better and worry about contributing more to the team. When he asked what I was talking about, I told him that his hitting wasn't up to par with the rest of the team and that he needed work at getting better. Quietly and subtly, he began to cry. My 10 year old son who loved baseball more than anything and who was happy his team had won, was now crying because his dad who he had asked to help coach his team had told him he wasn't doing good enough.

What the hell had happened to me? It was about a 90 minute drive home, and most of it I spent trying to apologize to him. When I wasn't apologizing, I was thinking about the times that I was sitting in the passenger seat like he was, being told that I needed to do better. I remembered how I reached a point where I not only didn't want to be coached by my dad anymore, but I didn't want to play sports anymore. I couldn't be truthful with my dad anymore because I was worried I'd just let him down. It was that day that I vowed to coach my kids the right way.

Since that day I told myself that I was going to coach my kids like no other day ever. I wanted to be the first coach to have a kid on the team, and nobody in the stands could tell who was my son. I wasn't going to yell at them over other kids or show them any sort of favoritism. I was going to be the dad who coached his son just like the other kids.

Well, let's just say that is much easier said than done. A few years later I decided to become the head coach for my younger son's travel baseball team. I literally entered tryouts knowing only one other player and parent. Not long after I realized that my son was good, but not one of the top kids. Remembering my vow, I tried not to push too hard, but I felt that pressure of being the coach with a kid on the team.

I suddenly had all of these new parents and kids under my leadership, and the last thing that I wanted was for them to think that I was one of these coaches who favored their own kid over others. No matter how many mistakes my son would make, he would get more chances than others to play his favorite position. No matter how many times he would strikeout, he would still stay at the top of the order. In fact, I went the other way. I was so determined to show that I wasn't that coach that I hit my kid towards the bottom of the order, and even though he was a good pitcher I didn't throw him in our first tournament. Then when I moved him up in our order to second, in the back of my mind I was freaking out, wondering if parents were judging me and thinking I was playing favorites. I let him pitch the first game in our next tournament, and again I was worried that parents would think I was playing favorites.

For the most part of the past three years I have been able to keep two eyes on the field, and trust that he is doing what he's supposed to be doing. While he's in the batter's box, my eyes are focused on the pitcher to assist the base runners. He has hit all over the lineup, just like the other kids he hits in the spot that he deserves, but there is always that voice in the back of my head. On the basketball court I treat him like any of the other kids, or at least I think that I do.

Just like I had to when I was young, he is forced to listen to the game recap while I'm talking to somebody on the phone or at the ballpark. He is forced to stick around before after practice or to get to practice extra early to get things set up. He is forced to listen to his friends make fun of me for things I may say or do. He is forced to live up to the expectations of being the coach's son. As much as I might try, I can't shield him from that awkward relationship and emotions that come along with it.

His last baseball season was a struggle at the plate. He was clearly our team's weakest hitter. I would talk to him about it constantly. I'm not sure who was feeling more pressure, him or me. One day in Milwaukee after he struck out I noticed him crying as he was taking the field. This wasn't entirely unusual, but my reaction was. I remembered getting in his face as he was running out to center field and told him to think about the team and not himself. I spent that entire half inning with one eye on him and noticed that he was pouting the entire inning and was still down when he came back to the dugout. We were winning the game, but he was thinking about himself. As everyone else was heading into the dugout I grabbed him by the shirt collar and got right in his face and used profanity. To my knowledge nobody else saw or heard what I said, but to this day I'm still embarrassed about it. If that were any other kid on the team I would have pulled him aside and talked to him kindly about it, but because he was my son I abused my position as coach.

Later in the season we sat down and talked about things and my son told me that he liked having me as his coach, but he felt like there was extra pressure on him. He wondered why I never complimented him in front of the team like I did the other kids. For once I just listened. When he was done talking I told him that I was sorry and that I didn't like to give him compliments in front of the team because I didn't want anyone to think I was playing favorites. Yet that didn't sit well with me or him. I could tell that the lack of positive comments from me in private and in front of the team were wearing at him, and it was all because he was the coach's son. I had tried so hard to not treat him like the typical coach's son, that I had started to take away his love of the game. I had started to do what my own father unintentionally had done to me.

How did this happen? I thought about it for a long time. My first reaction was to quit coaching my kids. At one point I had made both my boys cry over baseball. I did the same thing to my daughter when coaching her in basketball. What the hell was wrong with me.

It seemed impossible to not expect more out of them as the coach's kid, yet why do we coach our kids in youth sports? The more I thought about that the more the answer became clear. As a parent, you should coach your kid in youth sports to spend more time with them. You should coach your kid in youth sports to teach them and their teammates how to play the game the right way. You should find the right way and time to teach them about important life lessons. You should treat them just like every other kid. Coach them during the games, but be their dad after the games. Just because you're still thinking about the game or disappointed with something that happened doesn't mean that they still are. There are much better times to talk about things and to try and make changes than when your child is literally trapped in a car with you. If you're the coach and your son or daughter isn't one of the best on team it's okay, it doesn't mean you're not a good coach. It doesn't mean that you aren't worthy of coaching all of the other kids.

After having this talk with my son towards the end of his last baseball season and making my daughter cry this past basketball season I've changed a lot of things about how I coach my own kids. I have seen a positive change and strides in their performance. My daughter played great basketball when I just let her play. My son is having his best baseball season since I became his coach because I just let him play.

As I come to the end of this long entry I don't know who is even still reading. However, if you are I hope you've maybe gained just a tad bit more sympathy for those sons and daughters of coaches. There is so much more than what you see on the field. Know that not all coaches worship their sons and daughters on the court or field. In fact, some coaches go the opposite direction and don't show any sort of favoritism because they don't want to be labeled as that coach. Also, understand that being the son or daughter of a coach doesn't stop when the practices or games do. As a coach make sure that you're not stealing your kid's love of the game for your own self-fulfilling purposes. It's okay if they're not the best. What is important is that you're giving them and the other kids the best experience they can have. By doing that, you're allowing all of the kids talents, including your own,

to really come out.