I have been many things in my life. Call me whatever your heart desires: a daughter, a sister, a friend. With all these come our fair share of setbacks and speed bumps. But the most recent role I have adopted seems to be sending me into the unknown.

As any athlete knows, there is no greater influence on how you develop as a player than a coach.

Expected to develop your skills specific to the game, a coach also shapes who you become as a person. They teach fair but competitive play, confidence, and good sportsmanship.

Sounds simple right?

I mean I have had plenty of coaches (I am a South Lakes girls lacrosse player after all) and I figured, really, how hard could it be to handle a bunch of 12-13 year olds? You go, you teach, you leave.

I could not have been more wrong.

Right off the bat I got the look. You know the look, quite popular among female teenage athletes, the one given when you do not trust the person but are supposed to be acting nice? Yeah, the look.

Throw in a few shy smiles, forced laughs, and awkward coughs, and voila, you have my first practice.

As if the pressures of making these tweens feel comfortable are not enough, there is the small matter of teaching them the technicalities.

After realizing the amount of planning caring coaches have to go through, it definitely makes me appreciate all the people, young and old, who have taught me the sport I love.

Through coaching, you have the opportunity to fill that incredibly essential, yet unique, role in a child’s life while nurturing life’s most valuable emotion.

And that, my friends, is passion. If you think about it, what else drives you to play? Sure, you are teaching 8-meter shots and ground balls, but it is the want to win, the need to play, the pure love that is essential in coaching.

And the most miraculous thing is that no matter how old you are, coaching is a two way street. In the end I think you will find that for as much as you are teaching, you’re learning ten times that in return.