When a Player Teaches a Coach

Today's blog was written by Jim Keena, a senior IT Management major at the University of Notre Dame.  Jim is a student in the Social Foundations of Coaching, a course taught by Play Like a Champion Today co-directors Professor Clark Power and Kristin Sheehan.

One of the important duties of a youth sports coach is to teach players how to be better people, both on and off the field. Sometimes, a coach neglects that duty, and qualities such as sportsmanship and respect go unlearned. But other times, it is the player who ends up teaching the coach.

12-year-old Matt Marotta did just that last month during his final hockey match of the Coca-Cola Classic International Peewee Tournament in British Columbia, Canada. After a controversial call by the referees at the end of the game, Matt’s teammates, led by their coaching staff, walked off the ice without lining up to shake hands with the other team’s players. To the astonishment of the crowd, however, Matt remained on the ice, alone, to shake hands with every one of the other team’s players and coaches, even as his coaches yelled at him to follow them off the ice.

 

Photo courtesy of Boston University Hockey

 

What Matt did is one of the hardest things to do in sports: defying not just his coaches, who are in control of his playing time, but also his teammates, who are undoubtedly a big source of peer pressure in his life.

What he showed was that when a coach falls short of the ideals of sportsmanship, that does not mean that his players need follow suit. Just because a coach fails to teach a lesson to his players does not mean that the lesson should not be taught.

In the coach’s defense, he later owned up to his mistake and said that he would accept any punishment that was handed down to him. He also claimed that his actions were meant to protest the decision of the officials, and that they were in no way intended to be a slight to the other team. From what I have heard from players, parents, and fans, it really seems like this is a great group of both players and coaches that simply made a mistake in the heat of the moment. So the focus here should not be on what was done wrong, but on what was done right.

Another thing that Matt demonstrated is that the oft-repeated John Wooden quote is accurate: sports do not build character, they reveal it (at least, sports can either build character or reveal it). His actions might therefore have served as a wakeup call to the other players, or to their parents. If Matt had the courage and the character to stay and shake hands despite the protestations of his coaches, why did no one else? Now, I will not blame the other players for simply following their coaches off of the ice; I think what Matt did is something that even the most respectful of kids might not have had the courage to do. Nor will I suggest that they have bad parents. But this does show that sportsmanship and respect are two things that can be taught at home as well as on the field.

So the next time that your son, your daughter, or one of the players that you are coaching takes the field, remember that good sportsmanship is a product of all facets of a child’s upbringing, and it is not something that should be neglected no matter the timing, circumstances, or the arena. We can all take a lesson from Matt Marotta.