A Great Coach is Love

By Justin Dee

In 20 years, they will not remember what you taught them, but they will remember how you treated them. To connect with our athletes, we need to love them. Even more than that, we need to BE love to them. Love is defined in the Bible, specifically in 1st Corinthians chapter 13.

Love is defined in the Bible specifically in 1 Corinthians 13. We need to use those characteristics with our athletes to add value to their lives and their journey. As a Christian coach, we strive daily to be like Christ. If we are to be like Christ, we need to be like love. We need to strive to BE love. God has given us a HUGE opportunity to invest in athletes lives as their coach. If we are to be like Christ and Christ is love, we need to strive to be love to our athletes by adopting those characteristics into our coaching of our athletes.

A Great Coach is Love is a manual to help the reader become a better, more fulfilled, happier, and more influential coach by incorporating the words and ideas of God into a coaching philosophy. More specifically, the author, a volleyball coach, believes that learning to love, and personifying love to players, is the best way to be a well-rounded and successful coach. In this scenario, "successful" does not necessarily mean having the most wins. A successful coach produces the best human beings out of his program. By showing players how to love, and how to be loved, through God, a coach will be successful.

The chapters of the book are structured around the main tenets of love told to us in 1 Corinthians. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of love, and is then tied to a methodology of coaching, and approaching athletes and sports/competition.

The strength of this manuscript is the straight-forward language used to relay the main points the author wishes to make. The ideas are presented in a simple way, each chapter is tied to a Bible verse, and then the ideas are extrapolated out to show how they tie back to different aspects of coaching. The author, himself a coach, uses his own life examples to show successes and failures when trying to adopt these ideas.

A Great Coach is Love is a well-written, informative, and thought-provoking manuscript that will be of tremendous use to any coach who wishes to learn the ways to incorporate God's thoughts on love into not only his coaching philosophy, but also life in general. By following the advice of the author, the reader will not only find "success"' as a coach, but also positively impact those athletes who he instructs, both in and out of sports.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667886893

Book preview

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A Great Coach is Love

©2023 Justin Dee

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

print ISBN: 978-1-66788-688-6

ebook ISBN: 978-1-66788-689-3

Contents

Introduction

Why Love?

Chapter 1

A Great Coach is Patient

Chapter 2

A Great Coach is Kind

Chapter 3

A Great Coach Does Not Envy

Chapter 4

A Great Coach Does not Boast

Chapter 5

A Great Coach is Not Proud

Chapter 6

A Great Coach is Not Rude

Chapter 7

A Great Coach is Not Self-Seeking

Chapter 8

A Great Coach is Not Easily Angered

Chapter 9

A Great Coach Keeps No Record of Wrongs

Chapter 10

A Great Coach Does Not Delight in Evil

Chapter 11

A Great Coach Rejoices with the Truth

Chapter 12

A Great Coach Always Protects

Chapter 13

A Great Coach Always Trusts

Chapter 14

A Great Coach Always Hopes

Chapter 15

A Great Coach Always Perseveres

Chapter 16

A Great Coach Never Fails

Chapter 17

Bibliography

Dedicated to the memory of Joanie Williams.

Joanie loved everyone she met. Joanie loved me. Joanie was love to me and I will always remember her as being love and bringing joy to all.

Introduction

Why Love?

I have heard many coaches say they love their teams. I have heard player after player remark love my team or post a heart emoji on Instagram. I have seen fans talk about loving this team or that team. I do believe, as the great DC Talk once sang, that love is a verb. I think we need to have action to our words. Love is a very strong word that sometimes gets overused. I mean, we say we love Chick-Fil-A chicken nuggets! (Who doesn’t?) We love a Disney movie. We love our hometown. We love, we love, we love. Are there tiers of love? Do I love my mom at the same level as my chicken nuggets? Do I love my dog with the same affection I love college football? (OK, I live in the south. Bad comparison) In all seriousness, what are the levels of love? Is love a verb or a noun?

As we start to unpack all of these questions, I always like to get a definition of a word. A simple google search yields three different definitions:

Noun-

An intense feeling of deep affection

A person or thing that one loves

A score of zero in tennis. (OK, we can rule that one out)

We have different definitions of the word love. Where does it fit in your mind and thought process? How do you define love? The Bible should be our ultimate guide in life. It should be our guidebook in every situation. Love is mentioned in the Bible 380 times in the King James Version (KJV). So, how do we unpack love? How do we come to a firm definition of exactly what I am asking for you to be?

In 1 John 4:8, the Bible states, Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. Now, we are getting warmer. God is love! You might be asking yourself, You want me to be like God? Well, what does Christian mean? Christian means to be like Christ. John 1:1 talks about how Christ is God. So, YES. I want you to be like God. What are you coaching for? Why do you go out every day away from your family to coach? Why do you suffer through the wins and losses? Why do you deal with the parents and the bench players? What is your motivation? Are you coaching for the wins? Are you coaching for the money? (OK, I will wait until you stop laughing) Or are you coaching for the long view? Are you preparing your team for what happens next? Not tomorrow or next week, but the next thirty years? Now we are starting to get a better picture of what love begins to mean within the world of athletics. Do you love your athletes? Do you love them more than chicken nuggets?

I want to dive into the characteristics of a great coach. I am not telling you I am a great coach. I make mistakes every single day. I stray often, but my eyes are always trying to get back to this path, to this truth—loving my athletes. If love is not your main objective in coaching your team, happiness will be fleeting. You will have highs. They will feel wonderful, but they will crash and burn and leave you with nothing. This whole book is based on the characteristics of love from 1 Corinthians. We must begin in verses 1-3 and 9-12 to understand what Paul wants to illustrate in the main verses 4-8. Here is the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 13:

1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ten but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

As I look through the first three verses, I can see part of myself. I may be the greatest coach in the world. I can speak and move mountains. I know the game of volleyball better than any other coach in the world. I can get a player to run through a brick wall. But if I do not love that player, I am only spewing directions on how to win a volleyball match. I often tell my players that a national championship trophy will not get them a job, but a college degree and knowledge of a subject will. Are you teaching your athletes only about the game? You are a clanging cymbal when life calls after their sport is done.

If we truly love our athletes, we begin to teach them about life outside of the sport. Some of you may be blessed enough to