The Value of Athletics 

Mike Gear | Former Football Coach, Sidney High School

I’ve been a teacher and coach for over 38 years now. In fact I’ve coached middle school athletics, high school athletics, been an assistant head coach, and for the last 34 years I’ve been a head football coach and even a sports official. So between playing and coaching sports, it’s been a significant part of my life for close to 50 years.

I hope to really accomplish two things today. First, to argue that everyone, not just the stars or the elite players on an athletic team, can develop attributes that will benefit them for the rest of their life. And second, to encourage parents to understand the fine line between supporting their athlete and overstepping their bounds.

First thing I’d like to do is take a look at the concept of a team that we have in high school. If you put a team together there are always going to be the starters, those people who get most of the playing time. You’re going to have the part-time players, those are the ones who go in and rest the starters or if the starters get in foul trouble or have an injury, they get a little bit of playing time. And then you have the other members of the team, and they’re sitting there on the bench. But today I’d like to concentrate on four areas that I think are extremely important to making the team successful and making every individual on that team successful, whether they’re the starter, the part-time player, or the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth man, and that is that there are things that they can take away from this experience that will help them tremendously.

First one is commitment. Members of a team have to show up every day, usually after school, maybe in the evening for two hours of practice. They give up their Friday and Saturday nights in order to play the games. They might have to spend many hours traveling on buses, especially in Montana, to and from contests. And there are a lot of other students who are sitting in the stands or are walking the hallways that go, boy I’d sure like to be on that team. But, they’re not willing to show up every day for those two hours. They’re not willing to show up every day and put in the work that is necessary to make that whole team successful.

So the success of that entire team is dependent upon the commitment of every one of its members, not just the starters but also the part-time players and other members.

Second, work ethic. This is the one that probably at the end of my 34-year coaching career has become more of a concern than ever. Are you willing to come every day and put forth the maximum effort? It doesn’t take any great physical skills, it doesn’t take any great talent, to work hard. It’s kind of like your basketball coach telling you that it doesn’t take any talent to play defense. All you have to do is work at it. It’s the same way with all the other sports.

Your improvement, how much you put into it, is going to have an effect on the other players. If you’re the bottom-end player, and if you work hard, you’re going to push the players ahead of you. You’re going to make them better. And if you’re the part-time player and you challenge that starter every day in practice with your work ethic, you’re going to make that person better. And that’s going to make the entire team better.

Work ethic by every member of the team is extremely important and it has to occur daily.

Responsibility. We talk a lot about this in the respect that you choose to be a member of the team. You aren’t forced to be on the team. You have come out to be a member of this team. And so you choose. Consequently you’re responsible for all the actions that are going to reflect upon your team and your teammates. Really whether you want to be or not, you’re expected to be a role model. Not just on the playing floor, or during the contest, but you’re expected to be a role model in the classroom. You’re expected to be a role model in your community.

Throughout the state of Montana we have communities of so many different sizes. If you’re in a small community, everybody knows you. So your actions and reactions and so on reflect throughout the whole group. Remember that you’re responsible for your actions and any negatives that you produce. They’re going to be picked up by the media that emphasizes sports at the high school level, and those stories are usually reported with great exuberance.

You are responsible to your group and your team and your community whether you like it or not; you have taken on that responsibility.

Sportsmanship and fairness. Everybody would like to be on the winning side. But you know in every contest there is also the other side. It’s important that we learn to play by the rules, learn to win with humility, learn to be gracious in defeat. Through all of those outcomes we treat our coaches, we treat the officials, and we treat our opponents with respect. We usually throw out there in everyday life the Golden Rule, that we treat others like we want to be treated; well I think that should also be the Golden Rule for athletics and athletic competition. It’s extremely important.

If we take those four things together—commitment, work ethic, responsibility, and fairness—I believe if we can carry those through our athletic career, through our co-curricular career, and whether you were a starter, part-time player, or the other player, you will be successful. Let’s go back to the makeup of the team and change it a little bit. Instead of team, let’s make it job and occupation. Let’s make starter, boss or bosses. Let’s make part-time players the assistant boss. And then there are you, the workers, the other members. Imagine that if you take those four things that we just talked about: commitment to your job or occupation, a great work ethic, responsibility for any actions and reflections to that particular company or person, and treat everybody that you work with with fairness, your job and occupation and daily life become successful.

It doesn’t matter what you did in high school. They don’t care if you were the starter or the star or just a member of the team. You have taken lessons that you learned playing for that team and now are being a successful individual. Athletics, I think, is one of the greatest arenas for personal growth. There’s no greater joy that we’ve had, or I’ve had, or our staff has had in coaching than when a less talented, less physical individual, who has desire and drive and an exceptional work ethic slowly, over two or three years of high school, laboriously becomes a contributing member of the team.

You remember those kids forever.

Their names will pop into your head much faster than when somebody asks you who played on this team or who was All State or All Conference on that team. You remember those kids who make the most progress from the beginning to the end of their career.

And parents, this is where you play a key role.

This is where it is up to you to allow, nor now allow, the personal growth. Unfortunately we have developed a name for a certain group of parents in athletics that, whether good or bad, seems to keep coming up in conversation. We call them helicopter parents.

They’re always hovering nearby.

I saw a great Tank McNamara comic the other day in the paper. It shows a young football player standing, waiting for kickoff. The ball is in the air. And he is on his cell phone to his parents, and his question is, should I catch it in the air or should I let it hit the ground and hope it runs into the end zone?

Obviously we’re taking parent involvement way beyond a boundary there. But you know it’s just something that has become a concern. With personal growth, be sure that your athlete is participating for all the right reasons. Be sure that he or she is not participating because of someone else’s motivation. Remember they aren’t you. They are not the same individual. They are not playing on the same team that you played on in the past.

Do not let your wants and desires overshadow their choices.

Also encourage them to participate, but don’t force them, don’t pressure them. Talk to them about why they want to participate, how they would feel about being in those different roles if they can’t be the starter, if they are that other player on the team. And I know that coaches talk to their teams and to their players all the time about their roles, and be sure that they’re playing with the idea that as a role player they can contribute to the team. They can come away with some very positive things.

Always provide reinforcement that is positive for their participation. Avoid critical remarks about their teammates, about officials, about the other coaches and players. Keep your focus on every positive thing that they do, and don’t worry so much about the outcome of the game.

Here is where it really gets hard for you: allow them to suffer some frustration and adversity without making it something bigger than it is, without immediately demanding somebody else make it right.

This is where you will really allow them to mature and grow. You’ve hired a coach, they are the professional that is going to determine who is going to play, what the offensive and defensive strategies are going to be, and make a lot of decisions that are going to affect your athlete. During the contest, officials will make a lot of decisions, some you may agree with and some you may not. And they are going to have an impact on your athlete. And the actions of the coaches and players on the other team have an impact on how your athlete feels during the contest. But all of these have the potential for frustration and setbacks, and the ways that you approach and work with your athlete through these frustrations, through these setbacks, are going to be lifelong lessons that they will learn.

My very potent, or most important information: please be sure they are positive lessons, things that they will pass on to their children when they are in athletics.

I would also encourage parents to follow the same sportsmanship and fairness guidelines discussed earlier. You are their role models in the bleachers and in the stands. If you’re going to be negative, I guarantee that the others around you are going to be negative. However if you are positive, if you encourage your team, if you encourage your coach, if you encourage the officials, even the opposing team if they make great plays, those are great positive examples and others will follow.

A recent newspaper article listed ten things that kids don’t want you to do. We’ve already covered a lot of them: don’t yell instructions at me when I’m on the floor, don’t yell at the officials, don’t yell at my teammates, don’t put down our opponents, all those kinds of don’ts. But I’d like toparaphrase the last two and put them together. They are: Don’t forget to laugh and have fun. It’s just a game.

I will be elated if we win. I will be disappointed if we lose. But later, after we go for pizza, I will feel fine. So keep that in mind when you’re in the stands or on the sideline. Be positive. Hopefully that positiveness will spread to the people around you.

Athletics is a common thread throughout our state. We have close to one hundred of the smallest communities, the smallest schools, and athletics is a source of community pride. Those community members are going to know the names of every individual on every team. On the other hand in our largest cities, high school athletics and students have to compete with college teams and athletes for recognition.

Each of those groups has its own challenge, whether it is having enough players to have a team or having enough money to keep a program going for a large number of individuals. Those are things that, as we progress, aren’t going to change very much. They are going to continue to be challenges. But after the years that I’ve put in in athletics I still believe that if we, coaches and parents and all individuals involved in the program, just take care of the little things we talked about today—showing up for practice, working hard, being positive, treating people the way you would like to be treated—if we take those everyday with us, all of our young athletes will achieve.

They will feel success.

Again, success and achievement are not measured just on the scoreboard. They are measured in the young people that come out of a program who are positive, motivated, contributing members of our society.

That is my hope for all young people who decide to participate in athletics or co-curriculars, whether it’s band or speech or drama and so on and so forth.

They can achieve without having to win on the scoreboard.