Coaching

    2004 was my 12th season coaching football. I coached special teams for Webberville High School. Before that I was the head varsity football coach and assistant track coach at Dansville High School for 5 years and worked with some great coaches and kids. I have evolved as a football coach over the years. I am also the web master for the National Single Wing Coaches Association. To me coaching is the best job in the whole world. You are working with young people, people who want to be there, and you get to work outside. I see coaching as taking a group of kids, teaching them to work as a team and taking them where they cannot go by themselves. I believe that High School coaching is where you take a kid and you plant him and turn him into a flower and they grow into a bud and then they unfold.  

Why I coach:

• Help make the world a better place by teaching lessons such as discipline, leadership skills, teamwork (the ability to work with others), that life is not always fair, physical and mental toughness, the value of hard work, sportsmanship, dedication and commitment through sports
• Live by blue car model and not red car model (Teach that it is more important to do your best and get better than to worry about winning)
• Be a positive influence in the lives of kids
• Help kids have a high self-esteem as the real path to a good healthy self-esteem is to work hard for something and achieve it.
•  Make sure that every single kid on the team gets taken care of and receives honest, positive, fair attention that they need. (Because of coaches who did not) 

• Goal-oriented and they teach this to their athletes too
• Accustomed to overcoming adversity
• Used to working with tight budgets.
• Masters at relating to others

As a Coach you should:

• Be a good role model. Let your athletes know that you will do what is right. Regardless.
• Be prepared.
• Be involved with the rest of your school.
• Constantly improve yourself as a person. Expand your horizons. Read good books. Accomplish something you always wanted to do. Be a better family man. Don’t be one-dimensional.
• Don’t take yourself too seriously. Enjoy your position and the chances that you have to work with young student athletes. Life can be tough, but we usually make it tougher than it needs to be.

• Build a personal philosophy based on values, not necessarily worldly success Enlarge my technical knowledge, and strive to develop wisdom and competency in all areas of the profession.
• Enhance and protect the physical and mental well being of my players
• Teach my players to respect self, teammates, opponents and the officials.
• Instill in players a desire to know and live by the spirit of the rules of the school, the team and the sport.
• Help create an atmosphere of friendly competition wherein sportsmanship and honor transcend victory or defeat.
• Cooperate with administrators, faculty, the athletic director and other coaches in maintaining and improving the educational quality of my school
• Transmit to my players a lasting love of athletics and life

Click here for more info about DHS football over the years (head coach 1999-2003)

learmanj@msu.edu