Co-Coaching by Max

Co-Coaching by Max - March 2024 Scholarship Essay

Ever since I was little, I have been heavily intrigued and fascinated with sports. I have played and watched sports such as soccer and basketball for as long as I can remember due to my deep love for sports. A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to spread this love to the next generation in order to foster a new generation of sports fanatics and athletes. To do this, I volunteered to coach at a local youth basketball league in which I used to play. I became the coach of a first and second grade team and, due to a small excess of coaches, got paired up with another coach. The person that I had to coach with was much older than I, came from a very different basketball background, and had a very different approach to coaching the kids about how to play the game as well as how to have fun while doing it. In order to help the kids learn and grow and for them to enjoy the season, we had to work together and merge our coaching styles to give the kids the best experience possible.

From the beginning, I knew that this was going to be very difficult due to our contrasting personalities and views of basketball. My coaching partner took the approach of attempting to motivate the kids and help them grow through the use of tough love. He would always take the approach of belittling the kids and pointing out their mistakes in order to try and motivate them to be better. Sometimes, he would get too caught up in the unimportant aspects of the game such as free throw shooting and try to point out intricate details of what the players were doing wrong. While he did make some good points and certainly taught the kids what they could do better, I took the approach of engaging with the kids one-on-one or in small groups and talking to them. If they made a good play during practice or a game, I would make sure to applaud them and recognize their accomplishments. If they made a mistake, I would pull them aside just for a second and advise them on how to fix the issue. I would do this in an encouraging manner and would always reinforce their confidence by telling them that they could do it and that they were already doing a great job. I always tried to keep the kids happy and build their confidence and love for the sport while also trying to help them learn and improve.

While our coaching styles were very different and while we did not always agree on how to address an issue or move forward, the other coach and I worked well together and taught the kids plenty about basketball while also boosting their confidence and love for the sport. I know that we accomplished this because I could see the difference in the players’ skills and attitudes from the beginning of the season to the end of the season. It was easy to see that they had a positive experience playing basketball that year because they were playing with so much more confidence and happiness at the end of the year than they were at the start of the year. Overall, my coaching style of encouragement and constructive criticism paired well with the critical coaching style of my colleague because he taught the players the details of how they needed to improve, while I taught them the fundamentals and reinforced their confidence and love for the game.

Throughout this process, I learned the importance of working collaboratively and putting aside your differences in order to produce a good final product and help those around you. While my colleague and I certainly were not always on the same page and had very different approaches to coaching, we did not let that get in the way of giving the kids a good season. There were certainly many times when I was not pleased with how he was handling a particular situation, and I’m sure that there were plenty of times where he felt the same way about me. However, we did not let our discontentment get the best of us and allow it to show in front of the kids. Instead, when we disagreed on a subject, we talked it over and came up with a solution to move forward with. There were also times when our solution was for him to coach the players as a whole and for me to talk to them individually to address an area for improvement. Through this experience, I learned how to work with someone that I did not agree with and did not necessarily like. I learned that the perspective that you have of someone should not and cannot affect the work that you produce with them as a whole. Overall, this experience helped me learn and grow because it taught me the benefits and importance of working collaboratively.