What Is A Coach?

Over and over again I hear about coaches belittling or bullying their athletes in order to get them to “step up”. I watch coaches disrespect officials when they disagree with a call. I watch sarcasm used as humour and I watch the body language of the recipient, and I intuitively know that the attempt at humour stung and made the recipient feel hurt, or humiliated.
Is sport about toughening up young people so they can take a hit? Is it about teaching them to handle trash talk from team mates, opponents or even the coach? Although many people consider these situations as aspects of sport that young people need to learn to deal with in order to be part of a team, I believe we can find success without tearing our young people down or putting them in undue danger of physical injury. I believe that a coach’s responsibility is about helping young people develop the skills to help them step into a positive, meaningful successful life.
Sport is the tool we use to teach life lessons. A coach is the person whom we trust to guide our young people through tumult and challenge to learn life lessons, moral responsibility, honesty, integrity, work ethic, team support, physical prowess through passion for a common activity or goal.
I struggle with the concept that our job as a coach is to “toughen them up”. I prefer to believe that our job is to find the uniqueness in each one of our charges and to help them learn how to use those traits to find joy and success in their world.
I have had the opportunity to work with a lot of exceptional coaches, and I learned something valuable from each one of them. Some of the strongest lessons however came from experiencing how not to do something.
The first coach I worked with when I was a teenager told me “never bring yourself down to the level of a child. Instead, stand up straight and make them look up at you. This is how you get respect.”
I tried to follow this expectation, but it felt so wrong to me (especially since I was working with age 10 and under swimmers). As I matured as a coach, I realized how valuable this lesson was. It was when I first realized that when I received advice, that I didn’t have to abide by it, just learn from it.
The next coach I worked with would point out individuals who were less skilled or had coordination or other challenges and announce to the rest of the team that this was “a bad swimmer.” He would publicly point out all the things they were doing wrong, in attempt to show their team mates how not to swim. 
From this coach I learned that through compassion and patience all things could be achieved. I took these more challenged swimmers and helped them develop the skills that they needed to achieve their goals. The coach saw this desire to work with the more challenged athletes as a weakness in me and suggested that I should not bother.
Another coach with whom I worked believed that only the talented swimmers belonged on a team. Their was no place for the weak, the differently motivated, the less skilled. By then I had gained enough confidence and had grown my coaching style in a direction that I was proud of, that I argued back.
Every participant has value. Every athlete offers something valuable to the team. If it’s skill based, compassion based, energy, passion, team spirit based, there are so many different types of people, goals and motivations that each offers a unique perspective and opportunity for others to grow, improve, mature and excel.
As a coach of a YMCA program I have had the opportunity to continue to direct my coaching in a humanistic or holistic manner. The YMCA vision is Mind Body Spirit. To coach within this environment allows me to continue to follow my coaching path.
It’s important to never assume a holistic or humanistic coached team can’t be successful. In fact the opposite is true. A positive environment can draw athletes together and create an environment of success and team that helps pull others along. More and more professional as well as Olympic and Paralympic stream teams are moving in this direction and seeing huge success for their athletes. 
I encourage coaches to think before they speak, parents to stand up to adults who think bullying or belittling an athlete is an acceptable way to speak to them, and everyone to help young people show respect and support their friends and team mates in a positive supportive manner.