Tag: athletes

An Interview with Coach D of NEO United Academy

 

  1. What is your soccer background?

Answer: “I have played soccer all my life.  From elementary school, to high school, then onto college at Wooster.  I have coached at Walsh Jesuit High School, Norton High School, and NEO United Academy.”

  1. What were you expecting to get from coaching high schoolers?

Answer: “I have always been a person that put a great deal of emphasis on how people treat others and how you carry yourself.  That being said, my goal while coaching high school women’s soccer is that these young women grow up to be respectful and prosperous women in the world.  I want nothing more than to one day see my former players making great strides throughout the workforce that represents what I instilled in them through their learning years before entering the real world after college and so on.”

  1. Are you a person of high moral character?

Answer: “I’d like to think that I am, in fact, a person with a high moral character.  My philosophy is that we are here for the love of the game and any award, championship, etc is just a bonus.  You will never see me running up the score or any of my players being obnoxious about winning on the sidelines.  I coach my teams in a way such that we are always respectful and know why we play the beautiful game.”

  1. How would you describe your coaching style?

Answer: “I would describe my coaching style as intense with a splash of fun.  Coaching girls like I have for the past couple decades you learn a few things about how to get their attention.  I run my practices with an iron fist, but I do it in a way that it is always a competition and the losers have a punishment.  If you want to see real intensity in play on the field give the team an incentive to win.”

  1. What is one piece of advice you can give to future soccer coaches?

Answer: “The one piece I’d give them is to never forget the reason why you are coaching.  You are there to play a pivotal role in how the kids grow up and carry themselves.  You want them to be respectful and happy.  Remember this and you will have done your job so that after a few years go by and you see them you can just look at them and be proud of how they have turned out.  This is when you find out how much of a truly good coach you have been.  Will be one of the biggest accomplishments you will ever have.”

Closing

Takeaway #1: The more experience you have with coaching sports, specifically soccer, you learn how to handle players and realize that not everything is about winning.  It is about teaching kids to be respectful and coming together to accomplish a common goal.

Takeaway #2: Allow your team to be coached by someone who knows how to balance intensity and competition into practices and the like.  This shows them that they will always be expected to give 100% but at the same time, they will be having fun with whatever incentive you choose,

Takeaway #3: Seeing the former players later in life and realizing how they have turned out and knowing you played a major role in this will be one of your greatest accomplishments as a coach.

Do you still think winning is everything?

Let’s remember why we play sports and use that to give our audience a show and allow them to see what doing it for the love of the game really means.

Paying to have a Role Model

In a world where professional athletes, especially football, are our role models and are seen as celebrities; do they get paid too much for this image they have?  They get paid millions of dollars to play sports for a living.  At the same time , we as fans, endorse them by buying products that they are sponsored by and purchase sports memorabilia with their name on it.  Do they deserve this enormous amount of money to play sports?

Elizabeth Vollmer from The Waltonian Eastern University, believes that paying these athletes, “NBA makes $24.7 million, $17.9 million in the MLB, and $1.9 million in the NFL,” is far too high because these average salaries are more than the President of the United States which is $400,000 annually.  This does not seem to be fair to her considering that schoolteachers and veterans do not get paid nearly as much and there is more of these types of people in the world who deserve it more, in her eyes.  To put this in perspective, for each one of Kobe Bryant’s baskets he makes, this amount is, on average, the same as an annual salary for a schoolteacher.  She concludes with talking about allowing these young athletes to acquire this amount of money to play a sport is one of the main reasons why they feel as though they are entitled and lead to many issues. The Waltonian

The Perspective explains to us that with the increasing annual income of professional athletes and the low annual income of the average fan is starting to lead fans away from paying for merchandise and tickets which will ultimately lead to the downfall of the sport because of the lack of an audience.  With sports becoming more and more prevalent throughout the daily life of children growing up, their wish is to become a professional sports athlete “but for the big money, not for the love of the game.”  The main point of this article by The Perspective was that while many think that the overpaying of athletes is something that cannot be changed, the consequences in regard to how people view professional sports will be detrimental further down the road. The Perspective

Megan County from the student run newspaper at Northeastern Illinois University, agrees that professional athletes are overpaid but also states that she is somewhat responsible for this because she, herself, buys highly priced tickets and has purchased at least one piece of apparel for each Chicago team.  We have to remember that even though a sport is being played, it is still very much a business for these teams.  To understand this better, she goes on to explain that “The highest paid public employee are college coaches in 39 out of the 50 states.”  As well as Nick Saban, the head coach for the Alabama Crimson Tide, is the highest paid public employee in all of the United States.  Somehow this does not seem real, but when it comes to football and just sports in general, people are willing to pay and hand and foot to coaches and the like to get their fix of sports and such throughout the year. The Independent

Chris Mueller, a writer for Bleacher Report, poses the question to his audience to think if the amount of money these athletes are paid is actually more than the player is actually worth.  He explains to us that we are partially the one’s to blame for how much they are getting paid because of the amount of money we are willing to pay out-of-pocket to support our teams.  If we simply stopped going to games and buying team related memorabilia we would bring down the overall prices of these to lower the budget.  It is hard for us to stop supporting our favorite players and teams because “there is no way to put a value on how that person has positively affected your life.”  Supporting them gives us the determination in ourselves to do something great in our lifetime.  It gives us self-motivation to not quit and strive for the best. Bleacher Report

Paying an enormous amount of money to support your favorite teams and players seems like a good investment but in the long run, we are contributing the issue that arises about professional players getting paid a ridiculous amount of money to play a sport.  We are causing our problems but at the same time, none of us would dare to stop paying and stop supporting them.  If we did, the true reason to play a sport, for the love of the game, would be restored and we would see true passion throughout the games and events.