By Bob Cook
October 25, 2013
On Mon., Oct. 28, I hold my first practice for my seventh season coaching basketball through the Alsip (Ill.) Park District, a record of longevity, if not success, that makes me the league’s Jim Boeheim. This is a result of me having three kids go through the program (with one to go, if she’s interested). It’s also a matter of me really having a great time coaching kids, my own and others.
On this blog, I write a lot about the craziness of youth sports, including all the junk coaches take, justifiably or not. But for the most part, coaching my son, daughter and son was a great joy, despite the amount of work involved for a volunteer side job.
I certainly haven’t been immune from the nuttiness, such as when I celebrated my 40th birthday by getting rushed by an angry parent in the middle of an Alsip basketball game, with that same parent, upset her son had to take a turn on the bench, after the game screaming at me outside the building for the entertainment of everyone getting into their cars.
At one point, I admit, it did all seem to be too much. In 2010, I wrote a piece called “Why I Coach (?)”, which appeared in the middle of my toughest season since I picked up a whistle for the first time, coaching my oldest son in his Oak Lawn (Ill.) Park District second-grade basketball league in 2004. It was my youngest son’s 7-year-old baseball league, and things just didn’t click. It didn’t seem like I was jelling with the players, and I certainly wasn’t with many of their parents. I thought maybe I was burned out. I felt bad because after the season, my son wasn’t interested in playing baseball again. I felt like the experience, and my leadership of it, turned him off. I figured my coaching days were done.
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