The End
The end of every season brings on an entire onslaught of emotions for a head coach, and very rarely are those emotions the same each season. Having coached a number of different teams at different age levels and with different levels of success, I can say that there is so much more than a team's record that determines how you feel as a coach after that last game has been played.
The end of the first season being a head coach in a new sport is usually a huge relief. You're just happy to have survived and hopefully fooled enough people into thinking that you really knew what you were doing. You've exhausted all of your practice ideas and wonder what the heck happened to all that free time you used to have during that particular time of the year. After that last game has been played in your first season as a coach you look forward to getting back to life as it used to be, and you have now gained an entirely new appreciation for anybody who has ever given up their time to coach a team in any sport at any level.
As the years go by and you adapt to the change in your personal schedule and social activities, you start to develop different feelings as the end of the year approaches. You've survived parent and player issues. You have learned more nuances and drills to add to your practices. You have experienced more highs and lows and are getting better at managing your emotions. Most importantly, as a head coach you begin to realize that each team and year are very different, and no conclusion to the season is ever the same.
Joy and Happiness: Very few seasons ever end this way. There are few times or instances where a team ends it's season with a win. Typically, most sports, even at the youth levels, conclude their season with some sort of tournament. Only one team walks out with a smile from those events, but the joy and happiness at the end of a season for a coach rarely has anything to do with what happens between the lines. I have been around some teams, parents, and groups of kids that I literally could not wait to get away from. You literally start counting down the number of days left in the season. Oddly enough, these have been some of the most successful teams I have ever coached or been around.
The best team I have ever coached was a basketball team that averaged about 1 fight per week. These weren't the good and competitive practice kind of fights, but the fights that you really needed to be on top of as a coach. On top of that, each week seemed to bring about a new parent complaint about playing time. I even had to have a meeting over who I chose for a postseason award because in the eyes of some people I was a racist. Despite going 11-1, I was thrilled when I didn't have to be around some of those kids and parents anymore.
A few years later I was a part of a coaching staff that oversaw one of the most successful teams in school history. Yet, as the season went on all of us on the staff were growing tired of the players and their attitudes. By the end of the year, nobody on the team or the staff was sad to say goodbye for a few months.
Anger and Frustration: This is the absolute worst way to end any season. Some years can be an absolute pleasure to be a part of, and then something happens right at the end of the season that makes you want to put a fist through a wall. It could be something that happened with an individual, but it usually has something to do with how your team finished out the year on the field or court. Maybe it was an end of the year funk or epic collapse; whatever it is there is very little that will take away that competitive fire except for time off or some sort of off-season workouts or practices. There is very little warning when this might occur, which makes that feeling even more maddening.
Last season my travel baseball team had a very good year. We really seemed to be playing our best baseball of the season heading into our last and biggest tournament of the year. While I didn't go in thinking we would win it, I felt very confident about making a long run and being one of the last teams left competing for a championship. The next thing I know we come out and play 3 of our worst games ever and are one of the very first teams eliminated. I was thoroughly embarrassed and enraged. I would literally sit and think about those games for weeks. I scheduled practices and games to try and help me get over it, but time was ultimately the only thing that took away that frustration.
Similarly I had coached a basketball team one year that had really over-achieved. The team was so bad the year before that the head coach said there was no way any coach could win with those kids. He told me if I could get them to finish with a .500 record the next year that he would take me and the entire team out for dinner on him and it would be the greatest coaching job he'd ever seen. He even went so far to say this to the kids, in a totally non-demeaning manner. So ten games into our season, with the exact same group of kids, we were sitting at 7-3. The kids and I had already planned where we were making this coach take us out to eat. We were playing two teams that we had already beaten earlier in the year. I knew the games wouldn't be easy, but I figured we would at least split. Well, we went 0-2 and I had an issue with my best player that resulted in him sitting on the bench to start the final game and me kicking his dad out of the stands near our bench. We still got our free team meal, but what had been such a rewarding season ended with such a bitter twist that I still look at that final week as the most frustrating week I've ever experienced coaching basketball.
Disappointment and Reflection: Coaching is like anything in life, it often ends with disappointment and calls for reflection. In my experience, this is how most seasons end for coaches. Typically as the season winds down or has come to an end, I spend a good amount of time making notes on what my team or I need to improve upon for the upcoming season. I dwell on what I could have done differently and what changes I will make the following year. Rarely do I look back and celebrate the high points of the season, but instead my mind wanders to the little things that cost us those close games. I think about individual drills and skills kids will need to keep getting better. I look back on things that other teams did better than us and what I need to do to get my kids to that level. These endings are usually somewhat easy to deal with because the transition to the off-season is gradual and welcome. You try to get down all of your thoughts into a central place before you comfortably ease into the free time you once had. Looking at those notes a few months later often takes you back to that feeling of disappointment, but can quickly inspire and drive you as the next season approaches.
Satisfaction and Fulfillment: I openly admit that these times and seasons are very rare; however, there are a few seasons where things go just about how you had hoped and expected. Maybe in even more rare cases, the season went better than you had dreamed. Admittedly, the only times I experienced these emotions at the end of a season were when I went in with modest expectations.
The year after one of the worst and upsetting basketball seasons I had ever experienced, I was back on the varsity bench with almost all of the same kids that had driven us to the brink the year before. The off-season and months leading up to the season had even been trying at times, and a near mutiny occurred. Honestly I expected the year to be a relative disaster on and off the court. Yet somehow that group of kids managed to pull together and eliminate the #1 ranked and back-to-back state champions on our home floor in districts. Those seniors finished the deal 4 days later with a district championship that we had all worked so hard for over that past 6 years together in the program.
My first year coaching in a different school district I walked into a very talented group of kids that everyone wanted to talk about. All I heard was how good this group was athletically and how much I would love being around them. So naturally I expected to hate this group and figured they wouldn't stand up to the talent level of some of the teams I had been used to coaching in the past. From the first practice until our very last game, I don't think I dreaded one second with that group. That group of kids exceeded every expectation I had for them on and off the court. We went 15-5 and won the first conference championship in close to fifteen years. We had the dream close to a season, as in our final game all 12 kids on the roster scored. I could have and would have coached that team forever. The kids were all so good to each other and the parents were so appreciative of everything. It was like nothing I had ever experienced in coaching.
The same can be said for my first year as a head coach for baseball. Before the season started I knew one kid on the team besides my own son. Yet by the end of the year we had gone 35-5 and I had an entirely new family. Three years later I can still remember each of those losses, and I can honestly say that I would not change a thing. There is not one loss that I look back on with regret or "what if". I can pretty much guarantee that will never happen again. The same can be said about a basketball team I coached that finished 6-6. We had a losing record the season before and they had made so much growth. We finished the year playing great basketball and I truly wished the season was longer because I wanted so badly to see these kids keep experiencing success.
If I ever end a season with that feeling of satisfaction I make sure to savor it, because it is truly very rare.
Sadness: Coaching is a lot like teaching and parenting. Coaching and teaching are the two things in life where you are entrusted with children, and you know that at some point they are going to leave you. I have not had to experience the sadness of seeing one of my own kids move leave and move on to the next stage in life, but I can't imagine that feeling. Every year in education you let however many kids you have in your classroom into your heart, and every year they take a piece of your heart with them when they walk out your door for the last time.
The same thing happens in coaching. Countless hours are spent working with kids and getting to know them. Sometimes you get so close to them that you treat them like your own kids. When you're working as part of a program, you see these kids grow up over the years. Senior night is only a preview to that true last game when they play for you and you get to address them. As that last game winds down and you know it's all coming to an end you find yourself taking in all the small things and wishing you had just one more game or practice with them. You think about how things will be different the following season without those players that are leaving or graduating. You think about how much those players have changed and grown over the years, and more importantly how much they impacted you. You know that they'll always be part of your extended family, but you also know it will never be the same again. You tell yourself that you're not going to cry, but even the toughest guys can't control it. Sometimes you can hold it in until you're in your car, classroom, or office, but others you end up baring your soul in front of them. Even worse is when they bare their soul in front of you and break you down with their emotions.
One of my favorite all time movie scenes is from A League of Their Own where Tom Hanks' character loses it on one of his players and says there's no crying in baseball. I could not agree more whole-heartedly with that expression as it applies to sports, but when it comes to saying goodbye to kids you truly love with all your heart any man will break down and cry. Ending a year with the feeling of sadness usually means that you have a special bond with those teams or players that goes beyond the typical coach/player/team relationship. Those seasons, players, and teams are rare, so feel free to let those tears go.
