What My Coach Taught Me about Training the Next Generation
This article is an excerpt from the book that Rochelle and I are currently writing. We simply couldn’t wait until publication to communicate how vital it is that we train and mentor this next generation in such a way that faith is effectively passed on. My coach embodies this principle!
Whenever I think about coaches, there is a specific person that immediately comes to mind. My high school football coach, Jack Schugars. To this day, I can’t bring myself to call him Jack or even Mr. Schugars. I am compelled to use the title, befitting of his position and his character. Coach. Coach Schugars remains a legend in the state of Michigan to this day. He maintains a record of 262 wins and 78 losses along with countless conference championships, high school playoff qualifications, district championships, regional championships, and 3 Michigan High School State Championships, of which I had the pleasure of being on one of those teams. Coach has also gone on to serve the staffs of other high school football programs as well as the college ranks where he is still active as of this writing.
However, beyond all of those professional accolades, what stands out to me is his desire to continue to train young men toward a specific way of life. Coach Schugars is a Christ follower and makes no apologies for that. In fact, he unashamedly uses his coaching platform to urge people toward faith in Christ. This is not something he tries to hide and has influenced many players to at least investigate a relationship with Christ.
So, when I found myself on a ministry trip for Not On My Watch to the sunny state of Florida, there was someone I knew I wanted to connect with while I was there. My high school football coach from twenty-seven years earlier! It just so happened that he lived for part of the year in Lakeland, Florida working at Tiger Town where the Detroit Tigers conduct their annual Spring Training. I thought it would be a long shot, but I reached out to him through social media to see if he would be available to come to the church where Rochelle and I would be speaking in just a couple of days. To my surprise, he responded within minutes inquiring as to the details of the service. And then he responded with this message. “Please call me now if convenient so I can tell you my story and what has been happening!” Naturally, I dropped what I was doing and called him. I wanted to hear what was going on!
Walking out of the restaurant where my family and I were eating dinner, I dialed his number and within one ring a friendly and vibrant voice on the other end answered the call. Coach Schugars was pleasant, but he didn’t waste time with preliminaries. He immediately began to ask me what was happening in my life, inquiring about my wife and children. To my astonishment, he knew my wife’s name, even though I had never had the opportunity to introduce her. He then started filling me in on what had been happening in his life. He discussed his wife’s tragic death just four years prior due to cancer, his voice still carrying a tinge of emotion as he talked. He described his continued involvement in coaching and how he still keeps up on the lives of his former players. And then he began to tell me the miraculous story of how the Lord brought a godly woman into his life, whom he is currently dating. He made sure to add, “But she loves the Lord and this is definitely a God thing.” And then he said it. Not that I had remotely thought it or that it demanded to be said, but he felt the need to make the declaration anyway. “I just wanted to let you know that this seventy-seven-year-old man has not lost his faith. My faith is as strong as it has ever been.” While I never doubted this, Coach Schugars wanted to let me know that the most important thing in his life, his relationship with Christ, had not wavered.
It wasn’t until days later that I realized what Coach Schugars was doing here. Here he was, twenty-seven years removed from being my football coach, and he was coaching me. He was training me. He was nudging me toward a specific way of life. Not that he felt that there was any deficit that needed to be addressed or that he was even consciously doing so, but he is a coach and was simply doing what coaches do. With his words about his faith, he was modeling how his remained strong to this day. By him taking interest in my life, connecting on the phone, and celebrating what God was doing in my family’s life, he was a source of incredible encouragement. This football coach understood what every one of us needs to awaken to. Nobody outgrows the need for this type of training. Everybody is always desperately in need of someone who can model, encourage, and correct, communicating a way of life that strengthens us for the road of faith ahead. He understood that many people abandon their faith in the later years of life, and he wanted to make sure that I knew he was not one of them.
Sunday evening came and I arrived in the sanctuary only to see coach Schugars already seated and ready for the service. There would be no way for him to know the importance of his visit, but his passionate presence there that day, served to breathe such encouragement and vitality into me. I introduced my entire family to him after the service and we posed for a picture together. After all, nothing is ever official until it is posted on social media.
This picture serves to remind me that regardless of how much time passes, what life events transpire, or the geography that may separate, this next generation desires to be strengthened by those who are further down the road and who can provide for them what a vibrant faith looks like through modeling, encouraging, and correcting. This is the essence of training, and this is what this next generation is craving.