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I'm not quite sure what drove me to become a pants kicker (football coach). Perhaps it was a combination of my having spent so much time in a football helmet and the numerous hits to the head over the years; it definitely wasn't the money. If anything, my bank account seems to have developed a large hole somewhere. It's not all give though; I've received a mental and physical rejuvenation from the players, a kind of youthful osmosis.
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I can remember the first time became reacquainted with a football helmet after many years away from the game; I was observing a practice at Johoku in the spring of 2005 and the team was scrimmaging. I noticed an unattended helmet on the ground. Like a giant hermit crab, I shuffled over and occupied it; the familiar stench dictated I take it for a test drive. After I put the helmet on, everything came back to me and I knew what I had to do; first, put myself into the scrimmage. Shortly afterwards, I caught a pass in the flats and took it to the house; damn near pulled a hamstring.
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Long ago, when my neighborhood pals and I first learned of organized football we thought we'd died and gone to heaven. We'd discovered a sport where we could don gladiator like armor and run full speed into other kids; in any other scenario such violence would have been illegal. My first year on the team, we played all of our games on the road because we lacked a football field. We only won one game that year (1976), but we happily took our lumps; tellingly, we all returned to play the following year.
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Those days, my teammates and I lived for gamedays and we measured ourselves by what we did on the field. Football was everything to us and we were drawn to it. Unbeknownst to my knucklehead friends and I, we didn't need the game of football; we needed a kick in the pants (discipline) within the context of something that appealed to us. For my teammates and I, our coach, our opponents, and the game itself had combined into one dynamic curriculum.
.Those days, my teammates and I lived for gamedays and we measured ourselves by what we did on the field. Football was everything to us and we were drawn to it. Unbeknownst to my knucklehead friends and I, we didn't need the game of football; we needed a kick in the pants (discipline) within the context of something that appealed to us. For my teammates and I, our coach, our opponents, and the game itself had combined into one dynamic curriculum.
Despite it's status as the holy grail of objectives, "winning" as a primary goal is too narrow a focus. Character development and discipline, on and off the field, is where it's at. You can plug in any experienced coach with a pulse into a football program and get a favorable result on the field. Athletic adversity is an effective teaching tool, especially, when dealing with young and impressionable youth. There will always be those kids who, for whatever reason, didn't receive the proper dosage of pants kicking (discipline), needed to excel, or abide by established norms. Perhaps the parents, or guardians, were absent, ill-suited; or just plain busy. What better surrogate than a pants kicker with a whistle to step in. As far as the football is concerned; if everything is addressed in a balanced and thoughtful manner you'll get a good result, on and off field.
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