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Reply to "Coaching cursing at players"

The thing about coaches is that they come in so many different stripes.  Some coaches are great human beings, great teachers, great motivators who love the game and love their players and know how to get the best out of each one. Some are lousy human beings, small men with big problems, who don't seem to especially like teenagers or even themselves, but know the game even if not much else.  Some  coaches and some players are like oil and water. Unfortunately, you don't get to choose your coach for the most part.   When player and coach are a mismatch in any way, it's the player who has to adjust.  Bottom line, a player has  to learn somehow to play for the coach he has, not the coach he wishes he had. For a young teenager that is sometimes a hard thing to learn. 

Doesn't mean he has to "like it" or pretend that the coach is something he is not. A foul mouth sob is a foul mouthed sob. I neither like nor respect most foul mouthed sob's that I have met. I especially don't get it when grown men with power feel entitled to address kids with no power in that way.  If the coach really is a foul mouthed SOB, who habitually curses at those under his power with no power to fight back, then it's more then okay for him lose respect for the coach as a  human being.  Even so, he needs to learn to play for the coach despite not respecting him as a person.

It would be a shame too if one foul mouthed sob could rob him of his passion for the game and drive him away from it before he reaches his ceiling.  It is such a grand game and there are many amazing people involved in it and many great coaches out there.

(I should say that there are exceptions within limits to the mostly hard and fast rule that you can't choose your coach.  Travel ball is the one place where to a certain extent that is possible. For example almost our entire 18 roster from last year basically refused to play with the same team again -- even though the group had been together for several years and highly successful. And it happened over issues with a coach.  The long and short is that this is big organization that fields teams at many levels with not enough quality coaches to go around -- at least last year.  The 18u coach in particular was a disaster in the eyes of many.  Lots of the guys made it clear that they were not willing to play for him again. He was apparently asked back though. I guess coaches are hard to find, even in the travel industry.  But players were really serious about not playing for him again. Consequently that organization is  not fielding an 18u team this year. The players are spread over several different teams now.  But that is extreme and unusual. )
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