I am at Marist High School all the time. All…the… time. Parents, students, and wrestlers jokingly tell me they are concerned for me any time they drive by the parking lot and don’t see my car there. But the reason I am at school all the time is simple: I love my job. I want my students to learn the value of proper grammar, be confident in their writing skills, and to appreciate the craftsmanship of a good novel or short story. I want my wrestlers to succeed… in life and on the mat. I want them to get into the school of their choice, land their dream job, and maybe someday comeback and help this school out by replacing me when I stink at my job. Simply put, I can spend all the time I do at Marist High School because I am passionate about it. And that is what I want to talk about this week - passion.
No matter how much I am at Marist, I am rarely the only person there. I am not referring to the other dedicated coaches and teachers in the building who spend countless hours there though; I’m talking about the athletes. Whether it’s an early Saturday morning, or a late Wednesday evening, somebody, somewhere is practicing. That’s that way it goes with high school athletics today though. Athletes today are expected to do so much more than when I was in high school. At times, I think to myself about how much I would have loved the opportunity to put all these hours in instead of finding time and places to get extra workouts in on my own. But sometimes I think to myself – would I have loved it? Would I have been as passionate about my workouts, my training, and my dedication if someone else was forcing me to workout at all hours of the day, train every weekend, and focus on my goals?
This is where coaching young athletes becomes tricky nowadays. If you hope to be competitive, you have to out-train the best. Wrestling, more than any other sport, rewards hard work. The hardest working wrestler may not always win, but he will certainly succeed more than he fails, and the hardest working wrestlers on the hardest working wrestling teams today are working hard year round. The term offseason used to refer to time off. Now, it refers to the opportunity to change your training, to get a different type of practice in – a less intense, less structured (at least in our case) practice. Athletes today (at least the dedicated ones) don’t know any better though. They don’t question why they have to work all year round, and don’t complain about losing time with friends or at home.
All of that is great, as long as passion is still involved. I can’t stress how concerned I am that some of these young athletes are going to completely turn their backs on sport once they’ve moved on with their lives due to burn out or desire to do other things. At Marist, we try to keep things fun for our wrestlers, and I think that is evident year in and year out when they feel good about themselves and produce at the end of the season. I honestly don’t know how they’d survive without having fun. I’m getting paid to be here all the time – they’re not. I can remember the last year I wrestled in college (it wasn’t my last year of eligibility), I knew it was time to stop when I absolutely dreaded practice every day. I didn’t want to feel any more pain, frustration, or disappointment, and that is all I could think about when I woke up every morning to go to the training room for therapy on my knee, when I left class to head to the practice room, and when I returned to the training room after practice for more therapy and ice wraps. There is absolutely no worse feeling in life than detesting something you once cared about more than anything, and that is my worst nightmare for any athletes I coach. I dread the day I can look into one of my wrestler’s eyes and see apathy. It’s a slippery slope, because as coaches we preach dedication, determination, and sacrifice while simultaneously attempting to help them enjoy their high school experience to the fullest. But it’s also something I think the staff at Marist (I’m speaking of much more than just wrestling people here) does a wonderful job of handling. That’s what makes Marist such a special place to be in my mind. Adults everywhere are committed to helping students get the most out of their four years here.
Coaches – whether they are in or out of season – can sometimes overlook that, but it is evident in the amount of time and work Marist athletes put in and evident in the amount of graduates who have moved on with their lives that return on weeknights and weekends to support their former coaches and teammates, and it is evident in the eyes and the voices of the parents as they cheer on their children or congratulate them.
So I guess I just wanted to explain why I am always here through this blog post. It’s not because I’m a poor planner or a slow grader or a meticulous coach. It’s because I want to be. And what can Marist wrestlers take from this post? Just the knowledge (if they are not already aware of it) that they are at a special place, and a reminder to make the most out of their experience here as well as the rest of their lives. Find something you are passionate about, and work hard until you can make a career out of your passion. Take advantage of your high school experience by, finding the things in life you are passionate about, getting the grades for the career you want, and figuring out how to remain passionate about life for the rest of your life.
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