February 24 - For a coach, it’s essentially the sporting world’s version of a dentist appointment.
You dread its arrival and anticipate the likelihood that it’ll be a painful experience, but understand that it’s necessary.
It’s cut day.
Most male high school student-athletes are living in a small and innocent world. It consists of their studies, weekends with their buddies, dates and dances with their girlfriend, and sports. As a coach, taking one of those aspects of their young life away … well, it sucks.
Many times, a player who is cut is someone who has done everything right. He’s been to all the offseason stuff, to the voluntary strength and conditioning programs and practices. He’s always among the first to arrive and the last to leave. His academics are in order, he doesn’t cause trouble in or out of school, he treats his teachers, coaches and potential teammates with respect.
Essentially, he’s everything you want in a player. Except that he’s not good enough.
Maybe he’s the seventh outfielder, or the fifth middle guy. Or a pitching project who “might” be someone who can help you by the time he’s a senior. You try and talk yourself into how and why you should keep him, grill your coaching staff on every potential scenario which would allow you to keep him, and you keep coming back to the same sticking point: He’s simply not good enough.
And how, exactly, does a coach prepare himself to tell a 16- or 17-year-old kid that he’s not good enough? That despite the fact that you really like him, how you’re proud of all the work he’s put in, and how he’s done everything you’ve asked of him, that you’re not keeping him. Coaches stress over that exchange. They have sleepless nights and unproductive work days in anticipation of the look and sometimes tears of disappointment. And in today’s age of overbearing and protective sports parents, they also dread the potential fallout from their decision. (Did I mention that athletic directors and principals also despise cut day?)
My advice to players who get bad news this week is simple. Everyone has heard of the Michael Jordan story. There are plenty others out there as well, examples of athletes who rather than packing it in upon being cut, used it as motivation. Tom Brady was the seventh-string quarterback when he started his college career at Michigan. Mark Buehrle got cut in high school. Orel Hershiser was cut in both high school and in college. Kurt Warner, the QB who was just elected to the football Hall of Fame, worked at a grocery store after being cut by the Packers in 1994. Four years later, he was leading the Greatest Show on Turf.
One of the best coaches I’ve ever coached with, Scott Rowland, once said during tryouts, “Everyone who plays the game, at some point in their life, has someone tell us that we’re not good enough. For some of us, that’s in Little League. For others, it’s in high school, college, or in the pros. But it happens to each and every one of us.”
And it has to. It’s the harsh reality of sports that not everyone is entitled to a uniform.
As much as you like a kid, if he’s going to slow practice down, you can’t keep him. No matter how hard he’s worked and how much he represents what you look for in your players, if he’s never going to see the field and is going to take much-needed reps from the starter at his position, you can’t keep him. It’s a tough call to have to make, but like Rowland said, everybody has someone make the call at one point in their career.
And sometimes the person who has to make that call is you.
