I never thought that one person could have such an impact on someone else’s life. In my early middle school years, I played for a Girls Soccer team, known as OCSA, with my best friend at the time. We both loved soccer and enjoyed the endless carpooling to tournaments on weekends and practices during the week. On select practice days our coach would take evaluations of our skills so we could see how much we each improved. One evaluation, my best-friendbest friend received poor feedback. My coach wrote negative and adverse comments only to her specifically. At practices, I noticed he began to pick on her and a few others for messing up all the time. He was very demeaning and never said anything nice or gave appropriate criticism to them. After receiving all the belittling backlash, my friend decided she was done with soccer for good. She quit, not because she didn’t love the game anymore, but because of the negative atmosphere our coach created.
Years later, after looking back on what happened to many teammates of mine and my best friend, I became a coach myself. I currently coach for the U12 Boys Soccer team at SSA, an age group I played when I observed this unethical situation. I believe three important elements that contribute to becoming a great coach are fairness, development, and positivity; – all things that my coach in the past lacked. Throughout this past Fall season, I focused on being un-biasedunbiased and positive. Even though players come to practice to learn and to further develop their skills, itsit's also imperative that we keep and encourage their desire and excitement to participate in check.
I may not have been able to correct the situation at hand, however in the future I hope to contribute to an overall positive player to coachplayer-to-coach environment.