Differences: Negatives or Positives

Coaching has exposed me to a lot of people from across the globe. I have no idea how many different individuals I have met through coaching; hundreds certainly, thousands probably.

I have thought if I could be a changing influence on but one, it would all be worthwhile. While that might be a noble thought it is also faulty thinking. At some point I recognized the influence all those people were having on me.

Soccer was a foreign sport to me. I knew nothing about it aside from the objective was to kick a ball into a net. Then my eldest decided to try soccer when he was entering Kindergarten. I assumed at the time this would be a passing thing and he would move to football as soon as that option opened to him. I assumed wrong.

I became a student of the game. I learned from the local high school coach. My circle spread a bit when I met an English gent who conducted team camps. He had a different approach. One of the high school assistants had a German background and I learned something of the German approach. And I took "coaching courses" through USSF and NSCAA.

Then there were the foreign exchange students whom I had the great pleasure and joy to coach. A pleasure and joy because they were different. I learned much from them, but was not attuned to that knowledge in the beginning. They were the foreigners here to learn about American culture and my thought process did not go much beyond that.

Then, as an assistant coach, I watched the head coach try to mold a foreign player into his concept of a soccer player and the clouds opened up, light shone through, angels sang. It was one of the biggest A-ha! moments of my coaching career and I have reaped the rewards ever since. Not just in coaching, but in life.

I had always been a bit of a rebel in terms of coaching soccer. I questioned a lot of things, but trusted the establishment. I was immensely dissatisfied with the USSF "coaching courses" and only slightly less so with the NSCAA offerings. It seemed to me the US Soccer culture worked so very hard to turn out robotic clones of what they perceived a perfect player to be while at the same time strangely admiring and valuing the free spirited creativity and versatility of the players recognized as the world's greatest.

As I watched American high school coaches try to teach soccer fundamentals to this foreign exchange student I began to question why. This kid was talented and knew the game. In my estimation he was easily among the best players in the program. And he had that elusive "flair" that American soccer admired and craved. When he was relegated to the JV team I was disappointed. When I questioned the reasoning I was told his skills were terrible, he was un-coach-able and he'd be a poor influence in that regard on the varsity players.

Definitely not what I saw in the player. By American standards his skills were not very good. His technique was definitely not textbook by USSF / NSCAA standards, but it was extremely effective. In truth, he had a much broader skill set than any player I had seen to date. Just because his skill set was different, he was labeled a weak player and un-coach-able because he went with what he knew worked efficiently and effectively for him ... and therefore helped his teammates.

That was a "A-ha!" moment in coaching ... and in life. I began to look for and often times embrace at least portions of different perspectives. Amazing things began happening.

For instance; XI + I = X in Roman numerals makes no sense, correct? 11+1 = 10 is not a true statement. But if we look at it differently we find otherwise. X = I + IX or 10 = 1 + 9 does make sense. The only difference is perspective.

So, I continue my quest for different perspectives. The media all seems to provide the same perspective on what they report so, I intentionally go looking for different perspectives. What is another side to the story the media is portraying?

I told a friend recently that I love to debate and will even sometimes take a position I do not support or am not in favor off in discussions simply to gain perspective and understanding. I then added "catch me if you can, lol" My sense of humor. smh.

Anyway, I think this is where we find our society now. We have established comfort zones and ideas that everyone needs to fit into the same mold. Believe as we believe. We identify differences as negatives out of hand and so overlook positive differences that can benefit us. And I include myself in this first and foremost. I still have a long ways to go, but do like to think I'm making progress in the process. There's a reason God made us all unique and it isn't so we can change our uniqueness to become clones of one another.

At least I don't think so.