When the final horn sounded and the eighth-grade girls from Washington, D.C.’s Our Lady of Victory school had completed an undefeated championship basketball season, I turned and gave the team’s co-coach, Jake Jones, a bear hug.
We were both exhausted and exhilarated with the win, of course. These same plucky girls had not won even one game in this same division two years earlier, and we took a lot of pride in how they progressed — both as a team and as young girls. We smiled broadly, both knowing that their development was far more rewarding to us than it was to any of the girls.
“It’s so special to have shared this journey with our kids,” Jones said a couple of days later. “This is the kind of father-daughter experience that lasts a lifetime.”
After 12 straight years of coaching my kids’ Little League Baseball and Catholic Youth Organization basketball games, I am hanging up my whistle. With my youngest daughter entering high school in the fall, the time is right to end this stretch.
Coaching youth sports is a lot of work and a large time commitment. Not everybody can do it. But if there’s any advice you take away from this column, it’s that if you can, you really should help coach your kids. It has provided me with an infinite amount of joy.
I knew I wanted to get into coaching even before my wife and I had kids.
When my third-grade son played coach-pitch baseball in 2008, I watched from the stands and was horrified at how seriously some of the coaches were taking these games — they seemed to be sucking all the fun out of third-grade baseball. That’s when I volunteered.
John Ourand and co-coach Jake Jones celebrate their team’s championship season with their daughters.john ourand
The whole experience has been unbelievably rewarding. It taught me patience and empathy. It gave me a tutorial on how to lead people effectively.
Most importantly to me, it provided a behind-the-scenes look at how my children and their friends interact. One of my favorite memories came from this basketball season. We were losing a close game in the fourth quarter, so I called a timeout to try to settle the girls down. Before I said anything, one of the quietest girls on the team spoke up and took over the huddle.
“We are not losing this game,” she yelled to her teammates. “No way!”
I had nothing to add, so I sent the team right back on to the court. They ended up winning the game.
I loved seeing that bond form among those girls. I loved seeing the girls display leadership traits. And I especially loved seeing how surprised that one girl’s parents were when I related that story to them.
The Our Lady of Victory Blue Hawks went winless two seasons ago, but this year went undefeated.John Gardiner, Willow Tree Films
The whole experience led me to get rid of several preconceived notions I had about coaching. My first basketball game as coach was when my son was in sixth grade. I started riding one of the referees in the first quarter. If it works for Mike Krzyzewski, it certainly would work for me, too.
What I didn’t realize is that I was setting a poor example for my kids, and they started treating the refs as disrespectfully as I was. We got killed in that game — deservedly so.
I made it a point to never complain about missed calls again. Rather, I would try to get my teams to focus on what they needed to do to win. In 13 years, I was never tossed from a baseball game and didn’t receive any technical fouls in basketball.
I like to think that my calm demeanor on the sidelines helped. But the boys’ teams I coached always wanted to see me lose it — just once. One of my favorite memories came when my son was in eighth grade. One of the players passed a hat on the bench and came up with around $50 that he said he would give me if I would, just once, get teed up.
Our Lady of Victory adopts the philosophy of “Play Like a Champion Today,” a nonprofit that was founded by Notre Dame psychology professor Clark Power in 2006. The initiative emphasizes that winning is not the top priority for the kids who play.
Through annual surveys, “Play Like a Champion Today” found that kids who play sports value having fun and playing with friends much more than winning games. As a coach, it was my job to foster that kind of environment.
That message came through loud and clear last week, just two days after the thrilling championship game. I was still basking in the glow of the win as I drove my daughter to school. She had her iPhone out and was playing a game called Ballz. She was as animated as I’ve seen her.
“You’re really into that app, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you say you care as much about winning at Ballz as you did the CYO championship?”
She just smiled and said, “That’s a good question, Dad.”
Here’s what others in sports media had to say about coaching youth sports:
Turner Sports President Lenny Daniels described his experience coaching his son’s Little League team in 2017. Work had taken Daniels out of town on the day his team, the Rubber Ducks, was playing for the championship. At the urging of one of his colleagues, Daniels left early, hopped on an early flight back to Atlanta and made it to the field in time for the first pitch.
Daniels’ team won the championship. But his most vivid memory is that the boy who had the game-winning hit was a kid who had not done much at the plate all season.
“It was honestly one of the most rewarding moments of my life,” Daniels said.
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Mike Soltys, ESPN’s vice president of communications, measured his success as a youth basketball coach by factors that had nothing to do with the scoreboard.
“I found success not to be the won/loss record, but to be if the kid continued to play sports after being on my team,” he said. “The key was to have fun and make sports enjoyable. I saw too many Bobby Knight wannabes who took the pleasure out of the competition. The same thing translates to work. If you keep your workplace enjoyable, people are going to stick around.”
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Media industry veteran Lou Borrelli said that some of his fondest memories came from coaching youth swimming and soccer nearly two decades ago. In the spring of 2002, Borrelli was one of three coaches for the U-14 team in New Canaan, Conn., that went on to win the Connecticut State Championship as eighth graders. In high school, they won two state championships, one runner-up, and made one quarterfinal appearance.
“Today they are surgeons, fighter jet pilots, bankers, accountants, entrepreneurs, moms and life partners,” Borrelli said. “Pay attention — it goes by quick.”
John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ.
