Bo Wasurick

why i lov e football

 

 “Only coach if you can’t conceive of doing anything else.”
                                                                               ~ Bear Bryant

 

My passion for coaching begins with an overwhelming love and admiration for the sport of football itself.  I have developed this passion through many years of experiencing the tremendous lessons that the game can teach young men.  When coaching my first objective is to instill a passion and appreciation for the sport of football and the spirit of competition in young men. The second part is to use that passion and appreciation to try and teach a variety of life skills that will allow the young men to be not only successful in athletics, but highly successful in all facets of their lives. 

Football Teaches to Succeed at Life

 

“Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”
                                                                                        ~ Vince Lombardi

 

The game of football is an accelerated microcosm of society.  It is filled with relationships, diversity, adversity, struggle, triumph, disappointment, achievement, and much more each day.  Overcoming these obstacles and succeeding in the game of football provides great practical preparation for succeeding in life.  Within each football game, there are ups and downs, emotional highs and lows, successes and failures, pain, torture, and adversity.  Being able to overcome all of these obstacles requires an emotional and mental toughness that is difficult to find.  This presents a great opportunity for a coach to model and teach great life lessons in how to handle adverse situations in a positive responsible manner.  Taking the opportunity to guide young men in how to stay strong in the face of adversity, believe when no one else will, rise to the challenge, be on time, and be part of something larger than them; will allow each of these men to become better friends, students, sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers.  The game of football allows you the opportunity to teach extensive life lessons in discipline, trust, work ethic, responsibility, accountability, and leadership. 

 

Football Teaches Discipline:

 

 “There are two pains in life. There is the pain of discipline and the pain of disappointment. If you can handle the pain of discipline, then you'll never have to deal with the pain of disappointment.”

                   ~ Nick Saban

 

          Stay on sides on 4th and inches when the quarterback does a hard count.

          Run your lane on kickoff coverage.

          Be to practice at 7:30AM even though you are tired from the night before.

          Walk away when someone pushes you after the play.

These are all great examples of the discipline required to be successful in the game of football.  There are always two ways to do things in life: the easy way and the right way.  In today’s world, too many people teach young men to take the easy way, which cripples them for life.  The easy way to make money or the easy way to complete a job often results in negative consequences.  Teaching the young men to have the discipline to do the right thing, even when it is difficult to do so, will encourage them to not take shortcuts in life.  Taking shortcuts in football and life will result in failure in both.  Having great discipline as a football team is most often achieved by getting a group of young men to put the team before their own personal agenda.  This will then provide an example for putting their family first when they move on in life.  Discipline, just like character, is doing the right thing, even when you know that nobody is watching.

 

Football Teaches Trust:

 

 “Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

                                                                                                                   ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

One of the most difficult things to do in life is to truly trust someone.  We live in a very skeptical world where we are constantly influenced to question everything.  Trust is that blind leap of faith where you put your life in someone else’s hands, and believe that all will be good.  It is my belief that there is no single greater factor to a team coming together to achieve great things than developing an overwhelming trust among the players and coaches.  Players have to believe in each other on the field.  If a defensive end is responsible for C Gap then the linebacker needs to trust that he will hold his gap. If a player begins to doubt or question that trust; they begin to try and do more than their job and the opening for mistakes has arrived.  The players must also trust the coaches.  They must believe that the call, technique, and decisions made are the best for the team.  The final piece is that the coaches trust that the players on the field are going to do their job the way they were coached.  If the coach does not trust the player then the players will not trust him, and the entire thing can unravel.

The difficult part is trusting something that at times you have no reason to trust.  It may require trusting something when all of your logic tells you not to trust it.  These are lessons that will help you in all relationships in life.  Providing men an opportunity to blindly trust in their fellow men will later in life allow them to be more trusting as husbands, fathers, and friends.

 

Football Teaches a Good Work Ethic:

 

 “The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price.”

                                        ~ Vince Lombardi

 

There is no other attribute that can carry a person further in life than a good work ethic.  A good work ethic can overcome deficiencies in many areas.  In a job setting, a worker who has a good work ethic will get promoted to better positions and obtain raises for better pay over employees who may have more skill or natural talent but a poor work ethic.  In football, a player who has the work ethic to master their job and their technique can become a better player than a player who has more natural talent but a poor work ethic.  Learning how to work your way through difficult situations through blood, sweat, and tears is possibly the most important thing a young man can ever learn.  As a young man the one thing my father stressed to me over and over was the value of hard work.  He would often push me past a point that I thought I could go just to show me that there was even more inside.  This was a lesson that was then furthered by my college coaches.  It is often human nature for people to set limits on themselves as to just how hard they can work.  My job as a coach is to show them that they can far exceed what they previously thought possible.  There is nothing more thrilling as a coach than seeing a kid be successful after four years of hard work.  Life will never be completely fair.  In all aspects of life our young men will go up against people that may be smarter, may have more experience, or may know the right people; but the great equalizer in all facets of life is hard work.  Teaching young men that hard work truly does pay off is a tremendous lesson that I am continually thankful that I get to pass on.

 

Football Teaches Responsibility & Accountability:

 

 “A sign of wisdom and maturity is when you come to terms with the realization that your decisions cause your rewards and consequences. You are responsible for your life, and your ultimate success depends on the choices you make.”

                                            ~ Denis Waitley

 

In a family, each member has their responsibilities to the group that they must fulfill in order for the family to succeed.  The same can be said about the workplace.  If each member of a company does not fulfill their responsibilities, the entire company suffers.  Football is a great model for this.  Every season, every week, every day, every play, each football player has a responsibility that they must fulfill for the team to be successful.  Everybody from the starting quarterback to the last player on the roster has a responsibility for each and every play, and they must be accountable to their teammates for that responsibility.  If each and every player has the discipline to take care of his responsibility and hold their peers accountable for theirs, then the entire team is working together for a common goal and is learning the ultimate form of teamwork.  A player putting the goals of the team ahead of their own is the ultimate form of sacrifice on the football field, and when all of the players on the team do this, amazing things can happen.

 

Football Teaches Leadership:

 

“Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”

                                                   ~ Viince Lombardi

 

There are two types of people in the world: leaders and followers.  Too often, young men will choose to be followers because it is the easy thing to do.  Each time there is a group of people working together, there are always the individuals who rise to the occasion and lead the group.  Football is no different.  There are individuals on each football team who have the potential to be great leaders, but they need to have great leadership modeled for them.  One potential problem with young men becoming leaders of the team is that they can lead the team in either a positive direction or a negative one.  The responsibility to teach the young men who develop into leaders falls on the coach.  His leadership will serve as a model for the young leaders on his team and in turn, will give those players the ability to be good leaders for the rest of the team.  The more models of good leadership there are, the more leaders will develop within the group.  As more leaders are developed, the entire group becomes more dynamic and can accomplish much more than they had ever imagined.  Once those leaders develop and separate themselves from the followers, it is their responsibility to continue to develop into a better leader, and to not sink back into the role of follower.  These skills will carry over into professional lives.  Many successful CEOs, Presidents, and Owners of companies can be traced back to former football players.  The leadership skills they developed then allowed them to thrive in their professional settings.

 

These are just a few of the lessons that I believe football teaches young men each and every day.  I firmly believe that football has made me the man that I am today.  The formation of my values, faith, and compassion are all a result of competing at a high level in the game of football.  If I can influence a group of men, through the game of football, the way that I was; then I will be a very successful coach.  I love football not because it is a great game but because it is a great life.