coaching thought

So the other day I was reading my friends blog about coaching through FCA , or simply put coaching with the idea of God first! So here is what got me thinking and processing: 

"As a coach I have been given an incredible opportunity to live my life in such a way that over the course of a career, hundreds even thousands of people will be impacted personally by ME! This is a tremendous calling, and one that I was not intended to live up to on my own." 

Now I have know for a very long time that coaching is a huge way to impact peoples lives, I had many coaches that have impacted my life in both a positive and negative way. That is one of the reasons I became a coach because of the coaches that I had in my life and the ways that they made me become a better person and helped make me the person that I am today! However I have always just looked at my coaching job as something fun to do and just try to teach my athletes something more than just the sport itself, I want them to gain something from me that they can take with them for the rest of their lives. Now I have no idea what that might be that is most likely different for each athlete. I also know that sometimes I impact some athletes in a negative way - mostly that happens because we don't vibe or I say something to them that they cannot handle. These athletes will always stick with me! 

Since I have become a believer and a follower of Christ I try to treat my coaching style differently and I try to do what I think that Jesus would do in my position. I know that I do not always do this, but I honestly do try. Well then I came across this quote and it kind of blew me away! I guess you could say it had an impact on me. I would like to find some other Godly Coaching quotes that are out there to - so if any of you find some for me send them my way!! Well this quote also got me thinking about how many athletes I have actually been in contact with since I have started coaching back in 2000 - I am not counting kids I coached before then mainly because it was to spread out to try and figure out. I originally came up with about 320 athletes and Yoh said that I way underestimated that, see I didn't count all the track athletes nor did I count the athletes that I worked with during summer conditioning, nor did I count the athletes that I did work with however didn't really coach that team (tricky I know, basically I am saying that I worked with varsity kids but I only assisted that team). So I recalculated the number and the rough figure was over 1,300 athletes!! WHOA! Now I will be honest I am sure that some of those people overlapped since I coached them for multiple seasons and/or years! However the biggest thing is that I need to be doing a better job of how I interact with these athletes. So in the future of my coaching, however long that ends up being I need to do more of what the above quote is saying I need to make sure that I am impacted these athletes in a way that Christ wants me too. I need to understand this opportunity was a gift and utilize it and impact all these athletes in a positive way! 

Well I just wanted to process my thoughts on this quote and let my followers know that I realize that being a coach is a huge responsibility and that I have never taken it lightly and from now on I am plan on doing more than just coaching and praying for my athletes - much more!   

I will leave you with one more quote by Michael Jordan: 

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career, I've lost almost 300 games, 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."