Fathers Supporting Sports and Fathers as Coaches
Championships were built by fathers supporting out children and coaches instilling the skills.
Fathers coaching and supporting children in extra curricular activities like sports is inspirational and instrumental to the success and self esteem development in young children, adolescents and in the maturity of youth in today’s world. The bonds that develop in a few short years last a lifetime and bring with it memories that can be cherished forever individually and within the family.
Fathers that support children in sports are really encouraging their children to build special skills that improve their life and life’s decision making in adulthood. By supporting children in joining sports, fathers are encouraging children to branch out and develop on their own in some ways. To learn what commitment is all about and the sacrifices those children have to make to stay involved with a sport. It also, Sports also promotes strong bonds between family members because they are encouraging the child to do his/her best in practice and every game that they play. Whether they win or lose a game, sports bring families together to talk about a specific play or game and that builds family team work in understanding each other. Families often practice together in their own back yards to improve on areas that the child needs to improve in. Siblings often play against each other and learn new techniques, skills and encourage each other to try something new to them or just plain try harder.
- Jay Maes, Twenty Years Ago
Fathers that coach are often dealt with tuff challenges. A coach wants the best for their child but they don’t want to over push the child when he/she isn’t ready. To be a father and coach, you would have to always separate yourself at times from the father to coach to maintain that strong relationship with your child. As a coach and father, you are instilling a great deal of influence on a child. A coach wants to instill team work, sacrifice, camaraderie, discipline, strong work ethic, sportsmanship and a special bond between the coach and team. I also remember the word of accepting others that are less fortunate that us everyday kids. Our team had two very special individuals on our team. We had Todd who was physically disabled and Mike who was involved in a accident and lost his leg. But we treated both of them as our team mates. It’s not easy to be a parent and coach at times. Other parents may feel that you are giving special treatment to your child and not the same treatment to the rest of the team.
It has been twenty years since I last played a game of football. For six years of my life I learned team work, sportsmanship and discipline to build together a successful team that for nearly four years went unbeatable. But, who would have thought back then what coaches would have instilled in us and that the skills they induced in us still live today. As a close nit group back in the day and on the field, most all of us still communicate and get together as often as we can. Whether it’s on the golf course, deer hunting or grilling out on occasion, we still keep talking about the good old days. All those memories still linger within us and have bonded us together for life.
Even today we still talk as a family about our experiences with sports and even though it’s been twenty years ago our competiveness still lives on. The back yard isn’t as active as it use to be but one day it will be again as we have children that are starting to get involved with sports. We encourage our kids to be discipline, sportsman like and practice as much as they can. Every once in a while we’ll show them an old move or two to help them with their ability to perform as well as they can. But, ultimately it’s still a game, a short experience in life, and most importantly a time to bond together with friends, family and yes…coaches.
The definition of sports may be a little misleading in some ways. Extra curricular actives play a huge part in developing children into adultness. I consider sports to be the traditional knowledge as football, basketball, volleyball, hockey and wrestling but we should not forget other sports like band, cheerleading, and even FFA (Future Farmers of America). Because every extra curricular activity has a coach, a father and potentially a male role model for children they don’t have their dad in their life. Fathers are always coaches and coaches can always be fathers.
Jay Maes is the Executive Director of Not All Dads Are Deadbeats, http://www.notalldadsaredeadbeats.com/. To learn more about Not all Dads Are Deadbeats, you can contact Jay at jay@notalldadsaredeadbeats.com or 715-514-1309.