Coaches Forget Their Dumb Teenage Years Too Easily

might be on purpose

Kids are knuckleheads. Always were, always will be. Psychologists will tell you that their wires aren't all connected yet. They;re going to make mistakes. A real leader can use those mistakes to teach lessons that will help the kid for the rest of his life.

similar situation. hitting golf balls in my front yard within close proximity to the neighbors. I catch it good and its going right towards their house. Im thinking holy crap im screwed. It hit the power line. What are the odds? 
And yes people routinely forget how stupid they were. 

The difference isn't in what we did then compared to what they do now, its in how fast information travels and the amount/type of consequences in place today compared to when we were their age. I don't hide the fact that I was a knucklehead from our kids when I was their age....but I do explain that the phone in their hand is far more powerful than the one we had hanging on the wall of our house and the policies in place at the school today didn't exist when I was a kid.

Scott Bailey
Lamar HS
Lamar, Missouri

The famous saying "Girls the longest winning streak in america"

I constantly have to remind myself that I was young and dumb at times. Hell I still am. We live close to a nice river with a rope swing and a lake. This time of year the numbers in the weight room are down a bit. All the while I ride by the local swimming hole and half of the damn football team is down their playing in the water. OR I ride by the local basketball courts and it is full of kids that need to be in the weight room because they are to soft/ to weak. I often forget how much these kids are distracted compared to us married football coaches. I

Main advantage to growing up when I did is that was no cell phone, facebook, snap chat, twitter to record everything me and my buddies did.

Ditto that. 

kids haven't changed, times have, but kids are and always will be the same. The more I am around the kids in school more I realize my parent were brilliant and I was a dumb ---

I told our kids yesterday to stop acting like DA's because times have changed. Then we walk outside the weight room and I said around 30 years ago, I was riding through the parking lot and this hand rail had a bird sitting on it. What do you think I did? Jumped out of the car and shot at the bird with a pellet gun. We now have a hole in my future office door. On Monday, the word at school is that someone tried to kill Coach X. I ask the kids how much trouble would you be in today. They were all laughing and couldn't believe the guy that gets onto them for not shaving would do something that stupid. We forget a lot!

Same goes for kids and work ethic. I have mellowed a great deal on some of that stuff. I used to go off on kids for not showing all the time to weights. Now, I once in a while make a comment here or there but for the most part I just encourage the kids who show.

Why?  Because the truth is I would not have done all the stuff on a continual regular basis the I ask my kids to. We never had year round lifting or summer camp. 

I was a 2 sport athlete and took the 3 rd season off to be a kid and enjoyed my summer (we lifted 3x a week that was all). 

I am reasonable about what I ask our kids to do comparatively to schools around us, but way more than I was asked to do.

So let's see, I'm mellowing, more gray hair, sounds like the enlarged prostate and Low T is just around the corner. 

I do not know how hold you are, but since I turned 30, its been down hill trek from he#. At least physically.

I am 27 so not fit to comment so much on "how it used to be," but at my current school (1st full time teaching and coaching gig) I do notice quite a difference in the respect that kids have for adults in the building from when I was in school 10+ years ago. A prime example in my school is that the vast majority of the kids refer to their teachers and coaches by last name only, as in "Hey Smith" as opposed to "Mr. Smith" or "Coach Smith." It drives me absolutely freaking NUTS how the adults let this happen! I cannot ever imagine my classmates or myself addressing an adult that way, in what was a relatively short period of time ago. It wasn't ever even anything that the adults in the building coached us up on, it's just the way it was. Meanwhile, I've found it to be an extremely challenging thing to "teach" without sounding elitist, and especially when it doesn't seem to bother any of the other adults in the building (blows my mind). I figured this might just be a difference in the school and community values where I am (small town rural) versus where I came from (suburban, middle-upper class), but in complaining about this to my sister who is still in high school at my alma mater, she says I'm crazy and to lighten up cause they all do it in her school too. What?!? Does anybody else notice this trend?

In my 3 years at the school I've bemoaned the lack of respect and humility that most of our kids have since the day I arrived. I have attributed it a bit to the widespread access to technology and information kids have where adults are no longer seen as sources of knowledge like they once might have been. It goes deeper than that, but that's the crux of it. We do have some good kids and families in the district but the majority of our kids come from low socioeconomic, broken homes, so a lot of the lack of discipline/respect stuff can be attributed to that... but the trends seem to be similar across the board for all schools.

My HC was "Rod" (for Rodriguez), my OL coach was "Schneider", my DB coach was "Relova". That's just how we all were at my school. I loved those guys and respected the heck out of them. If they ever weren't comfortable with it, I would correct it no problem. They just never said anything so it was considered cool.

Part of it with me is my last name is Fernetti and kids still think they're being clever when they rhyme my name with Italian food. It's natural for them to shorten it to "Fern" but at my current school most do say "Coach Fern" or "Mr. Fern" but I'm not particular on it.