Making a better investment in your kids life is impossible.
“The big picture focused, relatable, dynamic, socially, & emotionally tuned coach is undervalued in today’s world.
It’s sad because that person not only has the ability to, but is longing to be the biggest difference maker in the lives of our kids.
Their value compounds forever.”
-Ray Zingler on X
Just about all of us who played sport at any level can reach back into the archives of the mind and remember a coach or two who impacted us heavily.
And while the memory of that coach may be from decades ago, the time it would take you to “reach back” and remember that coach wouldn’t take long at all.
It’d be nearly instantaneous for most.
Unfortunately, the inverse is true about poor coaches as well.
And sometimes that terrible coach’s memory can pop up even quicker and more regularly in the mind. It’s crazy how the mind reaches for negativity first (evolutionary mechanism) but it does.
This is critically important to understand because all of us, whether 21 or 81 are products of our past influences and experiences.
Parents, coaches, teachers, sure some had more influence (positive or negative) on us than others, but one cannot “get around” the fact that these people and experiences shape who we are today.
If we know this to be true, this makes injecting the highest quality resources into our children’s lives paramount.
Again, with 100% certainty the influences in our kids’ lives will impact the quality of their future selves.
Read that again.
Work ethic, success, happiness, fulfillment, all of it is dramatically impacted.
Therefore, for athletes, the big picture focused, relatable, dynamic, socially, & emotionally tuned coach, despite being undervalued in our modern world, will forever be one of the most important resources your child will ever encounter.
It ain’t about soccer or strength & conditioning, is it?
Their lives as athletes are finite. We all know this.
Every “extra sports lesson they just had to have” likely won’t matter in 5 years and it definitely won’t matter in 20 years.
But how the prescriber of that lesson treated them? The way they led by example? The way they modeled their behavior? The way he picked him up when he fell? The way they challenged them to think critically?
That stuff matters forever.
If you’ve found a coach who is pouring into your kid from a global perspective, stay with them as long as you can.
You won’t make a better investment in your life.
