Somewhere On Your Team Is a Future Coach

Somewhere on your roster might be a future coach. You probably don’t know who it is. Neither do they.

It may be your best player, the one who seems to understand the game a step ahead of everyone else. But it could just as easily be the quiet kid who rarely says much, the player who struggles for playing time, or the one who eventually stops playing competitively. Years from now, one of them may find themselves standing in front of a group of kids, trying to figure out what to say after a mistake.

And when that happens, there’s a good chance they’ll remember you.

We tend to think of coaching in terms of what we’re teaching right now. How to hit a baseball. How to shoot a basketball. How to serve a tennis ball. Where to be on defense. How to compete when the game gets difficult. Those things matter. Teaching the game is part of the job.

But while we’re teaching kids how to play, they’re also learning what a coach looks like. They notice how we respond when someone makes the same mistake for the third time. They see whether the best player gets treated differently from everyone else. They notice whether we still teach when we’re losing, who gets our patience when things aren’t going well, and whether improvement matters when nobody outside the team will ever recognize it.

We may forget some of those moments by the end of the season. The kids might not.

I understand that better now because I can look back at the baseball coaches who taught me the game. Geoff Ezell (my future father-in-law) coached me in Little League. Keith Hamrick coached me in Senior League when I was 13 to 15 years old. Later, Reggie Stewart and Scott Cochran coached me in high school.

I dreamed of playing baseball beyond high school. I also dreamed of coaching it someday. Like a lot of kids with big dreams, I couldn’t know where baseball would eventually take me. But those dreams were important, and so did having coaches who helped me learn what it would take to keep pursuing them. I still, to this day, recall Keith saying “It takes a special player to play professionally. You have to be able to do everything well: hit, field, throw, and run.”

Years later, I became one of the fortunate few to make their dreams a realization. I was able to play well-beyond high school and coach at the collegiate and professional levels. When I became the one responsible for teaching players, correcting mistakes, making decisions and handling the difficult moments that come with coaching, I didn’t arrive there by myself.

Pieces of Geoff, Keith, Reggie, and Scott came with me (along with coaches I had in adulthood). Not because I tried to copy everything they did, but because our understanding of coaching begins forming long before anyone gives us the title. The way we're taught, challenged, encouraged and treated becomes part of what we believe coaching should look like.

That’s also why I believe we should be careful not to shrink a kid’s dreams for them.

Most young athletes won’t become professional players. Most won’t coach professionally either. We know that as adults. But kids don’t need us to constantly remind them of the odds. They need coaches who will teach them that dreams require something from them. Focus. Work. Discipline. Resilience. The willingness to keep improving when improvement comes slowly.

There are no guarantees, and we shouldn’t pretend there are. But sometimes, when a kid is willing to work hard enough and stay committed long enough, a dream really does come true.

Even when it doesn’t, there’s value in learning how to chase one.

Every sport depends on people willing to give it back. Baseball doesn’t continue because there are baseball fields, and basketball doesn’t survive because there are gyms. The games continue because people care enough about them to teach someone else how to play.

For a brief period, youth coaches get to be caretakers of that process. You have a group of kids for a season, maybe a few seasons if you’re fortunate. You can challenge them, hold them accountable and teach them to compete. None of that requires taking away their enjoyment of the game or making them afraid to fail.

What they experience with you as a coach matters because you don’t know where any of them are headed. The player struggling today might eventually understand the game better than anyone expected. The kid with an enormous dream might someday reach it. The player who never makes another team after yours may return twenty years later because their own child wants to play.

And somewhere on that roster may be a future coach.

Most of us won’t remember every record from every team we coached. Trophies collect dust. Rosters change. Seasons that once seemed incredibly important begin to blend together.

I don’t remember every detail from my own youth baseball seasons. But decades later, I still remember the names Geoff Ezell, Keith Hamrick, Reggie Stewart and Scott Cochran. When baseball eventually gave me the opportunity to coach players of my own, part of what those men had given me went with me.

That’s the opportunity you have as youth coaches.

You may only get the team for a little while. But the game may get something from your work much longer.

Someday, one of your players may stand in front of a team (maybe even professional) of their own.

And when they do, a part of you may be standing there with them.