Stand and Deliver

Firsts: Stand and Deliver

Playing sports as a youngster you never realize your parents are living vicariously through you, all you’re doing is playing ball, having fun and hanging with your buddies, but as you begin the matriculation process things start to change. By the time you reach high school your representing your fellow students, parents and friends as well as alumni that support the program financially and as fans.

Nothing becomes more daunting than taking the field as a varsity football or basketball player, the money sports, the stands are relatively packed on both sides, newspaper reporters are on the sideline to record your achievements, or your failures, and college coaches with the power to enrich your life with an athletic scholarship track your every move. Your parents and coaches have prepped you for these moments, but pregame is palpable as you wait to go on stage, or take the field or court.

Once the game starts those thoughts end quickly, you’re simply doing what you’ve been working on for many years. It’s simply time to stand and deliver. Without my recruiting service and coaching experience of course I would not know these feelings, bench warmers rarely do. Yet the anxiety these players feel is real, you can’t practice for the feelings that strap you down.

The bigger the school, the more important the game, getting these emotions under control is far beyond physical, it’s mental to the max. Pre game speeches are wonderful, they lather these players up to a fury, but until you get that first hit in, take your first shot, its all conjecture, after that it’s auto pilot. Every coach feels that same tension, it’s a human chess match, and if the players are equal your decisions can decide games, scholarships and to the very few a pay check playing on Sunday’s.

Of course football was the sport I thrived on as a coach, preparing the student athletes for the games and beyond was a toil of passion, it never ended until that final game was finished. My thought process was to wake up thinking of any advantage we had, making mental notes on how to best underscore that advantage and perpetuating that advantage over and over until the players knew it as well as I did.

As a Head Coach you learn two lessons very early, you never win games, you only lose them, the starting Quarterback and Head Coach both face those nasty facts from the day you decide on a QB. Not that it’s good or bad, it just is. Parents love criticizing from the comfort of the stands. When Brian was playing his sophomore year at Marina I always took a beach chair and sat way back in the end zone, sure I grumbled and complained, but being a cancer in the stands can spread like Covid, I was self isolating way before this bullshit.

I’ve coached numerous players that have gone on to playing for prominent four year programs, from USC, to Alabama, Georgia and you pretty much name the school, I’ve coached a kid or coached against a student athlete that went there. If high school football is nerve wrecking, try playing in front of one hundred thousand folks, half of them hailing you as a hero, the other half a villain. Yet maybe only one percent of those warriors reach the next level, getting paid to play, where the stakes are much higher, the news reporters much more brutal and the physicality on the body more demanding than one can imagine. Now you must stand and deliver every week, or face abomination.

So the next time you go to a high school game take it easy on the guys, they are trying their best. God bless all the young men I’ve coached and I loved every minute of it.

Crack Egg Out