Personal Narrative: Division 1 Football Head Coach

I am Nick Drew, senior football player at Campbell University looking to one day become a Division 1 Football Head Coach. What I want in life is for my family and I to be happy and successful. I think those are two of the biggest, yet simplest things about life. If I’m happy and successful then I believe that everything else will fall into place. Along with my family being happy and successful I also want my players that I coach to be happy and successful. I believe those are two of the main things that I’d build my coaching philosophy around, making sure the players are happy and successful within the sport as well as in life. “Our philosophies determine the way we view objects and experiences in our lives as well as the way we view people

I believe that it’s my job as a coach, early on to figure out which coaching style is best for not only me but my players as well. I’ve had both command and cooperative style coaches and from experiences that I’ve had throughout my 13 years of playing football, I learned that as the sport of football is evolving, the cooperative coaching style is the most effective in my opinion. The reason I say that is because no one likes to be controlled and told what to do. Being a command style coach in today’s football world can be detrimental to your players because the players then sense that they can’t relate to you as a coach on a personal level. Unless your name is Nick Saban, who is viewed as a command style coach. From my own experiences that I had the most fun with, regardless of our records, the cooperative style coach was always my favorite because it allowed us to be ourselves and play loosely. I feel like that’s the coaching style that I will adopt right off the bat because I know how horrible it feels to have problems going on outside of football and you need somebody other than family members or friends to talk to and you want to talk to your coach about it but you’re hesitant to do so because he portrays that commanding coaching style. That’s another big reason why I think

In coaching, you can come across a diverse population of athletes, especially at the collegiate level. And being able to understand all your athletes regardless of their differences is huge. For example, you can’t coach a 13 year old kid the same way you coach a 19 year old kid because their at very different stages in the sport. The same thing applies to gender differences, you can’t coach an 18 year old male the same as you coach a 18 year old female in the game of basketball because they both take coaching very differently. For most females, yelling and occasionally getting in their faces when they mess up on something will only make them feel like less of a person, give them an attitude or make them cry. Another difference a coach may encounter is cultural differences with their players. As a coach I think it’s my job to try and understand the cultures of my players that may be different from the norm. The chances of me having a team of completely one race or ethnicity is highly unlikely so being able to understand players backgrounds is important and I think I’m capable of doing so. Having players from different races also brings out the stereotypes that coaches come across with their players. For example, a big stereotype in today’s society is that white guys can’t jump or all black guys are fast. As a coach I can’t allow