Coach!

My favorite job ever- and it was truly only a job in that I received a paycheck for it- was that of junior varsity soccer coach at Avon Lake High School in Avon Lake, Ohio, in 2001. The families of our student-athletes were, as many soccer families are, incredible. I remember one pre-game dinner hosted by a family with Hungarian ancestry, where the parents made an authentic meal and the players ate it up before going out to the backyard to play some barefoot ball.

Here's a story by Katie Brauns of the Bend (Oregon) about diverse parents stepping up to fill in as coaches in the local youth league, the Bend Metro Park and Recreation District. It's a common occurrence in youth leagues around the country, and America's thousands of leagues would not survive with parental involvement. My dad, knowing almost nothing about soccer, stepped in to coach my team in first grade, and we had a blast with him coaching my teams for the next five years until he yielded to more experienced Soccer People when I got to a traveling team.

I'd venture to say that US youth soccer has about the best organized structure of parental involvement of all sports. Coaching will be a recurring theme here due to our belief that coaches can have a HUGE impact, on and off the field, for young athletes.

Coach!