I believe that organized team or club sports are very important in the development of children. Furthermore, I believe in the role that both good and bad coaches play in our lives and that the impressions that they make on us as children last a lifetime. I have played many sports growing up ranging from soccer, basketball, flag football, and baseball to karate and jiu-jitsu. Each of these sports has taught me to look at the people around me in a different light. For example, a team sport such as soccer or basketball strongly emphasizes team play and the ability to cooperate with your teammates where an individual sport such as Jiu-Jitsu highlights the more individual aspects of sport. One thing that is constant throughout all sports is mentorship, specifically coaches and the parents of the team who play a very important part in many aspects of the young athlete’s experience. There are many aspects in which the adults around younger athletes influence behaviors that stay with us through high school sports and when working together with others in college. For example, there are many parents that cannot handle how the coach deals with the team’s tactics, which most of the time means they want their kid to have more playing time or they want their kid covering a different position and they take their frustration out on the players, coaching staff, and the refs. These kinds of parents are terrible when it comes to having a good team vibe because they want their child to think they are better than the rest of the team which is not conducive to success. Coaches are another variable when it comes to teaching kids to behave themselves in team situations and how to work in harmony with other kids. Personally, coaches have played a large part in who I am today and how I handle personal losses and wins. Another thing that coaches help kids with is understanding their role in the overall team structure, for example when I first started playing serious club soccer, I thought I was going to be a striker/forward but as time went on the coaching staff thought that I would fit into the team’s playstyle better as a winger or a center midfielder. Without good coaching I would have probably stayed at forward and I would have never discovered the joy of playing midfield. On the other hand, there are still a couple of bad coaches that I have played for. I remember one time that I botched a throw-in for my team which ended up in the opposing team scoring. A good coach would have helped me to pick up my head and helped me to move on to the next play. Instead, this coach decided that yelling would help him to make his point that it was my fault the other team had scored. These kinds of bad coaches have helped me to see that not all authority figures hold power over me, and that even though he was my coach, and he is supposed to be level-headed, adults just like us kids have their own problems in and outside of their professional lives. It is important to have good coaching and a positive environment especially when kids are still developing in order to create positive habits when it comes to working as a team later on in life.