Are you thinking about coaching your own children?

For something around thirty years I’ve had a pair of track spikes hanging on the wall above the desk at which I write.  Early each morning when I come into this dark room and turn the light on, those shoes are the first thing I see. They were given to me by a student of mine in the minutes following her last trip to the top step of the podium at the American age group track and field championships in Knoxville, Tennessee.  She had just accomplished a most amazing feat, and the shoes she gave me, still hot and sweaty from a hard day of competition, were her spur-of-the-moment thank-you gift to me, her coach.  

But that pair of shoes wasn’t the only gift I received. I was also given the gift of the final decade of my coaching career…and the opportunity to coach my own children.

Let me explain:

Life as a parent in this modern world is a balancing act akin to the one you perform when you leave the store with one too many bags of groceries in your arms. There’s simply not enough time in your days to get everything done.  Then one day you get roped into coaching one of your children’s sports teams…and your busy life becomes more than you can carry!         

I, myself, avoided this tricky not-enough-time-in-the-day-to-coach problem until my late thirties by remaining a bachelor a little longer than most to get the coaching bug out of my system. Then I became a husband…then a father…and that was when things started spilling out of my busy days.  

So here’s what I did:  I ended my coaching career – stopped… retired… called it quits! I ceased helping other people’s children and gave my full attention to my own son and daughter by forming a little two-person family track team…just ME AND THEM.  We live beside a river at the end of a long half-mile driveway.  So I turned the driveway into our family running track and converted our orchard into our jumping and throwing venue.  And all was idyllic for a while…a very SHORT while, actually. 

It seems that going out with dad to run and jump and throw wasn’t half as much fun for my children as I thought it would be.  This was a disappointment, of course, and I considered giving up the idea of coaching them.

Then I got a bright idea. The bright idea was to spruce up our little threesome by bringing a few of my children’s friends onto our little team.  I mean, to youngsters, “friends” are one of the few things in life that rank above toys and the morning cartoons on television.

So I added a couple or three of my children’s best buddies to our little team, and I’ll be darned if it doesn’t work like a charm. 

Our practices became training disguised as play.  We ran on the driveway and jumped and threw in the orchard, and a couple of times each week I took the little crew out to a nearby lake where we ran a fun course around it.  Pretty soon we began attending some low-keyed road runs and track meets. 

*****

…And this is where the girl who gave me her track shoes came in:

My day job during this time was teaching physical education, and in one of my classes, I came across a ten-year-old girl, whom I thought would be a great fit with this little family-centered track team.  So I invited her to join us.  She was one year older than my daughter and obviously talented.  But best of all, she was a role model extraordinaire and a perfect teammate. 

Soon the trajectory of this little team of friends took wings.  Even at the low-keyed level at which we were training, they started getting good…then better than good!  By season’s end, both this new gal and my own daughter had qualified to compete at the national championships in Houston, Texas.  So we went.  They didn’t exactly take the meet by storm and my daughter had a bad case of the nerves, but we had a fun trip…and they wanted to do it again.

But now I got another bright idea: If a “few good-friend teammates” was good…then wouldn’t “a whole bunch of good-friend teammates” be even better?

I asked my two children that question, and their answer was, “Yes”.  So I started adding new members right and left…until our “little” team of friends became a humongous team of friends.  We had outgrown our driveway and orchard, by now, so I moved our practices to the school where I taught.  We also needed a team name and uniforms, so I gave my two children the task of choosing them. The name they decided on was “COOL RUNNING”, which was a little quirky but just right.  My son chose purple and white uniforms for the guys, and my daughter chose purple, white, and pink for the gals. (Yes…PINK)  And over the following year my two children and this ballooning team of friends became “excellent”!  

The American championships that year were held in Knoxville, Tennessee, and we brought home “a lot of hardware”, as they say. But the gal we had taken to Houston, Texas the previous year absolutely TOOK THE MEET BY STORM!  She was now eleven and had qualified in four events (high jump, long jump, hurdles, and the five-event pentathlon).  Her chances of bringing home a medal looked good…but she didn’t stop at a single medal!

I don’t have time here to give the details, but on the first day of the competition, she won the pentathlon going away.  Then, over the next two days, she won the high jump, the hurdles, and the long jump!

She became the American champion in four events!  

Over my years of coaching, I have seen several special athletes from around the country win three national titles in a single year.  But I had NEVER seen any athlete win FOUR!   When she came down from the podium with her fourth gold medal around her neck, she gave me her shoes.

*****

Of all the coaching decisions I’ve made in my life, none was more successful than the decision I made to coach my own children by immersing them in a team of good friends!  I’m convinced that had I not gone this route, my original father-child team (with no teammates) would have failed.  

That doesn’t mean a parent/child team wouldn’t work for someone else.  I can name several such parent/child teams that have been resounding successes.  But it wasn’t right for me and my children.  

So what I’m saying is this: Evaluate yourself, your situation, and your children, and then take your own path.

A team, in a way, is like a river flowing.  A river is made of water, of course, while a team is made of individuals.  But the collective movement of individuals becomes the current that carries ALL members along.  

Over the next decade or so as my children grew up, this collection of friends dressed in purple, white, and pink uniforms carried home a collection of national championship medals and team titles that was impressive. Only one, though, won four gold medals in one miraculous meet…and gave me her shoes to remember her by.  

But one pair of shoes above my desk is plenty.