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A team can lose.
Any team can lose.
But in a sense
a very real sense
a coach never loses.
For the job of a coach
is over
and finished
once the starting whistle
blows.
He knows
he's won or lost
before play starts.
For a coach has two tasks.
The minor one is to
teach skills.
The second task
the major task
is to make men
out of boys.
It's to teach an attitude of mind.
It's to implant character
and not simply to impart
skills.
It's to teach boys to play
fair.
This goes without saying.
It's to teach them to be humble
in victory and proud in
defeat.
This goes without saying.
But more importantly
it's to teach them
to live up to their potential
no matter what this
potential is.
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It's to teach them
to do their best
and never be satisfied
with what they are
but to strive to be
as good as they can be
if they try harder.
A coach can never make a
great player
out of a boy who isn't
potentially great.
But he can make a great
competitor out of any
child.
And miraculously
he can make a man
out of a boy.
For a coach
the final score doesn't read
so many points for my team
and so many points for theirs.
Instead it reads:
so many men
out of so many boys.
And this is a score that
is never published.
And this is the score
that he reads to himself
and in which he finds
his real joy
when the last game is over.
Wilson Sporting Goods Company
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