Before I was a coach, I wanted to be...a coach?
This story is strange but true.
When I was in sixth grade, I shocked my parents and myself by announcing I wanted to join a rec league basketball team. (To their credit, they supported my choice.) I had not shown any previous interest in athletics. I was a bookworm, for goodness’ sake. I was also 4’10”, which has not changed to this day. But my best friend Jamie played basketball and so did my little brother, so I decided to try it out.
I was terrible. I didn’t have the arm strength to get the ball to the basket, so I shot granny style. I somehow got put on a really good team, so I learned a lot but understandably didn’t play much. The only points I scored that season were when my coach told me to stay under my team’s basket and wait for one of the other girls to lob the ball down the court so I could shoot an undefended lay-up. (Yep, I was that bad.)
I loved it, though, so I worked hard at it. I went to highly-regarded, out-of-town basketball camps to get better in the fundamentals, crying into my pillow at night because I was homesick and out of my element. I started conditioning training. I shot hours of baskets in the driveway, often well after dark. I didn't become a great player by any standard, but I improved by leaps and bounds. (I no longer had to shoot underhanded, and I could reliably make 3-pointers!)
Even so, my inner bookworm won out. I started feeling the academic pressure in ninth grade, so I switched from school ball to church league (where I was “little man” to elderly referees in an all-boys’ league) and traveled with the varsity team as statistician. In that role I grew in my overall understanding of the game, and I set my sights on one day becoming a basketball coach.
At the University of Tennessee I was a backup statistician for the Lady Vols (during the Pat Summit dynasty) until I studied abroad my sophomore year. Though my love of basketball never waned, when I returned to the U.S. I began to explore other career options, eventually becoming, well, a coach.
I’m not the kind of coach I imagined being in my younger years. I don’t diagram plays. I don’t tell anyone what to do. I don’t compete (which is for the best, as you know if you’ve ever been in a game situation with me). I certainly don’t yell at the people I’m coaching.
This kind of coaching is different. I help my coachees create their own strategies. I work with them to unearth what it is they want to do, what will help them live into their values and gifts and vocation. I do this out of a sense that we are all in this together, partnering with each other and God to make the world better for everyone. And if I’m screaming, it’s purely in an encouragement, cheerleading kind of way. (Usually it’s more like a little dance of joy.)
This is the kind of coaching I’m built for, no matter how much I might enjoy the sports kind. I am still that bookworm, that homebody I once was. I’m also a minister, and clergy and congregational coaching fits so well with how I understand ministry.
It’s fun, though, to see how the desire to become some kind of coach has come full circle. And don’t ever be surprised if I show up for a session in my Lady Vol orange.