The Heart of a Coach

Last Saturday, I coached the first soccer game of the season for True and Kate’s team (it’s a strange, small-town league where 4th-6th graders all play together). We won 5-0, with our star of the day, Jake, scoring three goals in the third quarter. I should be only thrilled, but the experience felt a lot like reading Lord of the Flies.

You’re not reading Lord of the Flies the right way if you stay detached from it. At the end of the story—which manages to kick the last prop out from under you—you should feel repulsed and badly shaken. Not by the boys on the island! By the fact that everything that bubbled to the surface in their “civilization” bubbles in your heart as well.

You know all the sneering, loud-mouthed, nepotistic coaches lampooned in magazines and movies? The ones that quietly give their kid the best position, who pay more attention to the athletes than the rest of the team, who are more concerned with winning than with having integrity? That’s me.

At least, I have felt all those feelings this season. Why rotate positions when my kid is clearly one of the best on the team? Why waste time teaching her—she’ll never play in high school? Why not teach them to slide tackle—the refs don’t always call it? Maybe if I humiliate the goalie when the other team scores it will give her more incentive to play better? Won’t the other coaches be jealous if we stay undefeated? That kid’s a bully anyway—might as well teach him to be a goon. How many laps can I make the team run before the parents freak out? Is there a way I can jimmy the rotation so that the inept kids never play? Maybe if I really ignore them they’ll just drop out. I wonder if the newspaper ever sends reporters to these games.

It sickened me just to type that last paragraph. That’s my heart! And that’s just my heart with respect to a meaningless soccer league. Imagine what my flesh suggests when the going really gets rough.

This is the bad news that we hide from ourselves all the time. The over-the-top jerks and villains on television? They lurk in all of us, and they are only restrained by the grace of God. Unless I am made a new creation in Christ, I will go on degenerating in the flesh, until I can’t even see the horrible caricature I’ve become. Until one day I’m screaming at a 4th grade girl for letting a stupid soccer ball roll into a stupid net.