Beyond X's and O's
Local high-school coaches discuss the hidden side of coaching.
- BY TOM GILLISPIE - Jan 26, 2015
East Forsyth's head coach Mike Muse gives instructions during a prep
basketball game between High Point Central. BRUCE CHAPMAN PHOTO
The great Notre Dame football coach was full of rah, pumping his players up for the big game. But in 35 years of writing about high-school and college sports, coaches have often said that there’s a lot more to coaching than rah rah and X’s and O’s.
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“The most important thing for a coach is forming a relationship off the floor or off the field,” says Mike Muse, the boys basketball and girls softball coach at East Forsyth High. “We sometimes have to take kids home, pick them up, drive them here and there. … Some kids don’t have the money for shoes or sweats, and we either find someone to fund it or pay for it ourselves. The players become like our sons and daughters.”
All coaches talk about preparing youngsters for college and life.
“What I try to do, and it seems to be working, is to prepare them for life, for college, for manhood,” says Andre Gould, the boys basketball coach at Winston-Salem Prep. “We teach values for being productive citizens, looking after their families, and other lessons for life after basketball.”
In addition, Gould teaches players to be competitive in all aspects of life.
“Society itself is competitive,” he says. “We’re all competing every day of our life. There are those who want to be average, and there are those who strive to be the best. I’ve always demanded the absolute best an individual can give me. There’s nothing beyond that, only 100 percent.”
Muse lists tons of things coaches do that people don’t see: scouting other teams, dealing with other coaches, checking kids’ grades and attendance, monitoring players’ injuries, lining the fields, washing uniforms, sweeping floors, compiling stats, and more.
“There are a lot of roles for a head coach, and you have to have a great support staff,” he says. “If you see us during the two hours of the game, that’s the easy part of our job; that’s the fun stuff.”
Paying it Forward
Laurie Grant coaches the Winston-Salem TYDE Swim Team and is an assistant coach at North Davidson. She says coaching swimming is not like coaching football or basketball since swimmers often work alone. But she adds there’s a lot going on that people don’t see.
“We have to rent the pool (for practice),” she says. “We practice at Winston-Salem State, and if they don’t have a lifeguard at the pool, we can’t get into the pool. We also have to make sure they have goggles and caps — they forget them — and we have to provide a ride to WSSU and back to the high school.” (The team rides a bus, and a coach drives.)
Despite the long hours, Grant says the ability to impact a young athlete’s life makes the hard work worthwhile.
“It’s great when you see a student find a sport they can belong to and excel in and grow in as a person. I’m relatively new to coaching—I just graduated from Penn State a few years ago—so the students are helping me grow as a coach, and I’m helping them grow as swimmers.”
Chad Sapp, the wrestling coach and track coach at Walkertown High, echoes this give-and-take aspect of coaching. “It’s not just about teaching fundamentals. We learn about each other’s lives and personalities, and it’s good to have those relationships.”
Sapp, 43, says he’s been around football and other sports since he was a kid. His dad is Bob Sapp, the retired football coach at Mount Tabor. “I learned a lot from my dad,” Sapp says. “One thing he always taught me about being successful is that you need to be good at dealing with players face to face. He was an extremely good people person.”
Bob Sapp is retired, but his 38 years of coaching remain with him, as do the lessons he learned along the way.
“People don’t see how much time you spend away from the family,” Bob says. “I was very fortunate; my wife knew I was a coach going in, and she did a great job raising our two kids.”
Coaching with Care
Gould says one of the biggest treats is when former players come back to visit.
“It happens all the time,” he says. “They come back after going to college at UNC or Florida or wherever, and they become a positive force for the program.”
Gould also cherishes his own mentors when he went to North Forsyth High (class of 1986) and Winston-Salem State, where he double majored in history and education. When asked about specific mentors, he points to Dr. Linwood Davis — “he got us to move beyond the surface of things” — and also Dr. Dennis Felder— “he preached work ethic and moving beyond the average.”
Gould’s learned his lessons well, and Prep has won four state Class 1-A titles in his first 10 seasons as coach. He says he’s had players who started out hardheaded and wound up pretty good teammates. Naturally, they were some of his prized pupils.
Gould’s learned his lessons well, and Prep has won four state Class 1-A titles in his first 10 seasons as coach. He says he’s had players who started out hardheaded and wound up pretty good teammates. Naturally, they were some of his prized pupils.
“Forget the coaching aspect; mentoring and being a father figure isn’t easy,” Gould says. “Some of them haven’t had a father figure since birth. Some are stubborn; they’re trying to find their way in society, trying to become a man. They don’t want to hear what you have to say, but that doesn’t stop you from saying it.”
Coaches also have to overcome language barriers. Garry Norman, the soccer coach at Atkins High, has probably coached more Hispanic athletes than most other Forsyth County coaches. “You coach all of them the same way, but with Hispanic kids, there’s often more work involved.”
He says oversight is also a chief concern, no matter which ethnicity you’re coaching.
“You have to take kids home every now and then,” Norman says. “You have to work to get physicals done, make sure they attend school, make sure they keep their studies up, things like that. You have to show up on their front porch pretty often. You might get a kid who has issues with authority, or you’ll get a kid who’s part of a gang. You try to keep them out, and you hope they don’t bring that to the team.”
Like the other coaches, Norman occasionally sees former players on the practice field or out in the community.
“You’ll be in a store or mall, and they’ll always come up and say hello,” he added. “It really means a lot. It’s why we all coach.”
NOTE: This appeared in Winston-Salem Monthly magazine in 2015.
NOTE: This appeared in Winston-Salem Monthly magazine in 2015.
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