I certainly admired his honesty

A couple of years ago, I "retired" after 16 seasons of coaching a boys soccer team. However, this winter I returned to the coaching ranks. I am currently coaching a 1st and 2nd grade boys basketball team in my church's Upward basketball league. Unlike soccer, basketball is a sport I actually played growing up.

There's a player or two on each team with some basketball experience, but for most of the kids it's their first time playing basketball. The first few practices have been spent going over the basics: dribbling, defense, rebounding and the general rules of the game. In the future I hope to teach them offensive spacing, setting picks and switching on defense. Who knows, by the end of the season we might even learn an offensive play or two.

The games themselves are very structured. Each 18 minute half is divided into 6 minute segments. At the start of each segment, the players in the game are lined up based on skill level, and each one guards the player on the other team with the similar skill level. They play a basic man-on-man defense with no double-teaming or pressing. The substitutions are set up so that no player ever sits out more than one 6 minute segment in a row.

We just had our second game, and the boys are improving. There's still a lot of traveling and double-dribbling, and they sometimes forget who they're guarding on defense, but they're having fun. During halftime we were going over some things to work on in the second half. One player had missed the first game, so this was his very first game ever. He interrupted my pep talk to tell me, "Coach. This is my first game, and I have NO idea what I'm doing!"

I certainly admired his honesty.