For all the coaches' wives picking up a thousand pieces of scrap paper with plays scribbled on them throughout the week, keeping them in piles on the counter for fear of throwing away some very important piece to winning this week’s game.
For those wives out there watching that pile grow week after week, finding scraps in the laundry, the bathroom, and car.
For those who have just started this coaching lifestyle and are irritated by all the paper and that every notebook you can find in your home is full of what looks like the same thing written over and over.
And finally, to those who have been doing this coaching life long enough to include small notebooks as stocking stuffers and know one of the ways to your coach’s heart is with a fresh composition notebook and a new ball point pen. For those wives who understand that just like in the famous children’s book, “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie,” there is a cause and effect relationship that comes full circle when you “give a coach a scrap of paper…” This version is for you.
If You Give a Coach a Scrap of Paper...
- If you give a coach a scrap of paper, he’s going to want a pen.
- When you give the coach the pen, he will draw a play on that scrap paper.
- After he draws the play, he is probably going to want a chair to sit down and think about it.
- As he is sitting there thinking about it, he will likely decide he wants his phone to call another coach so they can talk about it.
- As coach starts talking about the play, he is going to start looking for his keys so that he can drive while talking and thinking.
- Well then, he will start the car and he is going to find himself driving to the school.
- When he ends up at the school, he is going to find his way to the locker room where he will come across the laundry that needs to be started.
- After he starts the laundry, he will probably decide he might as well wait to flip it and during the time he is waiting he might as well go check on the field.
- When he checks on the field, he will probably decide it needs to be watered and he will turn on the sprinklers for a bit.
- So now that he is waiting on the laundry and the sprinklers he will go ahead and decide to plan for practice.
- When he starts to plan for practice, he will most likely find a way to incorporate that play.
- Since the play is in the practice plan now, he is going to teach it to the players.
- When he teaches the players at practice, he will inevitably teach them more than just the play.
- He will teach them about life, because it has always been about more than just a game.
- When he teaches them about life, then he will plant seeds and influence young men to be better people, sons, and one day possibly better husbands, fathers, Christians, and at the very least contributing members of society.
- When he teaches them these lessons, he will change at least one life.
- When he changes at least one life, he will undoubtably want to change more.
- So, he will probably start thinking about another play that can help him accomplish that.
- And if he is thinking about a play, he will probably ask for a scrap of paper to draw it on.
Wives, keep picking up those scraps of paper. If you are new to this lifestyle try thinking of them as much more than scribbled plays. Take it from a coach’s wife who has embraced the lack of blank notebooks in the home, those scraps of papers are more than just that. They are the start of something quite important, and it has very little to do with this week’s game.