Put Me In Coach

Submitted by Boys and Schools Blog

So, I recently finished Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto.  Yes, I know I’m a few years behind the times on that.  What can I say?  Having small children can make you a bit late to the pop culture party on occasion.  Anyway, it was funny, if you like pop culture criticism and commentary and if you weren’t annoyed by those guys in college who refused to have a conversation without referencing an ’80s television show, a defunct children’s cartoon, a movie quote, or MTV, “back when they played music.”  (I know that comes off like I didn’t like the book, which is not true at all.  I thought it was a lot of fun, but wouldn’t recommend it for some people.  Like my mom, for instance.)

Getting to the point, however, as far as Boys and Schools matters go, I was struck by one section where Klosterman talks about his experience as a teenage coach of a Little League baseball team.  Earlier in the book, he makes it clear that he was hardly a hardcore jock, so I thought his observations here were especially interesting ot the extent that they reflect some boys’ experiences with authority figures as well as an innate competitiveness:

“I was the kind of kid who hated authority–but sports coaches were always an inexplicable exception.  For whatever the reason, a coach could tell me anything and I’d just stand there and listen; he could degrade me or question my intelligence or sit me on the bench to prove a point that had absolutely nothing to do with anything I did, annd I always assumed it was completely valid.  I never cared that much about winning on an emotional level, but winning always made sense to me intellectually; it seemed like the logical thing to want.”

The reason I pick out this paragraph is because of its unconscious echo of two themes that I see a lot when it comes to working with boys.  The first is that you shouldn’t underestimate (and should even utilize) the spirit of competition that drives many boys–the unfocused desire to win can be turned into a learning tool.  The second touches on one of the things that we often notice about boys who struggle in academics–their willingness to work hard for a coach and a team.  I can’t pretend to understand all of the dynamics at play here, but the respect for the coach and the team makes it clear that anyone who worries about boys being discouraged by too much structure and discipline hasn’t watched a tough football (or baseball or basketball, etc.) practice.

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