EDITORIAL: Guiding lights

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN DON RATZLAFF
Having been immersed in high school and college fall sports previews the past two weeks, we’re impressed again how huge a role athletics plays in our culture, our schools and with our young people as literally hundreds of adolescents through young adults sacrifice time, energy and sometimes health to participate. For many young people, playing a sport motivates more self-determination, commitment and involvement than anything else in life.



Is that a bad thing? We think not, for the most part. But we won’t argue that point here and now. Instead, what has impressed us again these past two weeks is the quality of people we have to guide our children and young people as they give themselves so completely to this endeavor.



Whether at the local middle school, high school or college, the coaches who lead our teams are some of the finest individuals you could know. Setting aside the potential for unforeseen and unpreventible injury in a given sport, we can entrust our children with confidence to the coaches who ply their trade in a very public and pressure-filled forum.



We were reminded of our good fortune this fall while observing how some coaches from another community berated their athletes publically, used unnecessarily strong language to express their point of view, and otherwise emotionally dominate the very youth we presume they were intended to mentor and encourage.



It would be tempting to list the various coaches we’ve observed and interviewed these past few weeks, and tell you what special people they are. The likelihood of unintentionally overlooking one of them keeps us from doing that. But believe this: We have been blessed with good folks in these key positions. Each one is a credit to their team, their respective school, and their community.



No, they aren’t perfect people, either by their judgment on the field or court of competition, or by their habits as humans. But they deserve our respect and support until they prove otherwise. Those among us who invest energy criticizing a coach should reinvest it somewhere far out of public earshot.



We wish our coaches and their teams good luck in the coming weeks. Whether they win or lose, they will make good people proud if they simply continue their commitment to impeccable character.

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