subject: Why I like old coaches & trainers [print this page] Old coaches (30+ years in the biz) deserve respect from everyone for two reasons alone. Their years of service, and their age. You have to admire someone who, at an age when the whole world was at their feet, chose the field of sports as their life's work.
But there are other reasons why I give them even more respect - they have a lifetime of experience locked up in their heads and in their game books. They have seen everything that can possibly affect the game on and off the field - injuries, successes against over-whelming odds, flashes of brilliant physical perfection, and failures that go far below common sense for which there are no possible explanations. They have seen much and there is little than can surprise them.
More so, they try to pass the results of their experiences to their assistants. It is through this mechanism that the wisdom they learned from hard-suffered experiences. They want their knowledge to be passed forward into the future. Woe betide the assistant who assumes he knows it all (that is someone who will need at least 10-15 years to learn that he should have paid attention).
Some of the value that an old coach offers are in the details of how to train the players. It can be a stance setup, a trick to get inside an opponent's defenses, or a special jig to open an easy drive to a score.
Other information he will pass along will be found in his game book. Here are his treasures - plays he designed to handle dozens and hundreds of game situations. If you want to make him proud, study his past game books. Look for the interesting plays and study his notes. Get the story behind the drawn lines on the paper. It will be well worth the two or three years it will take to absorb his life. And you have entertainment for dozens of hours if you can get him to tell you the stories behind those plays.
If sports is your life - old coaches and trainers are worthy of your respect and attention - and any stories you can dig out of his memories.
