Why You? The Importance of Interrogating Your Purpose

A good coach knows her why.

A good leader knows herself well enough to know why she seeks something out. Teaching, teaching children, is impossible and essential and if it was easy, everyone would do it. Many athletes step into a coaching role at the end of their playing careers. They can’t bear to be away from something so central to who they are, or perhaps they had a great coach that inspired them to pick up the torch and keep it burning. In any case, those who lead in an arena are generally those who have integrated the existence of that arena into the very fabric of who they are. The step up from follower to leader is a big one. It’s not a good or a bad step – it just is. So why are you making it?

What would life look like without soccer? is a question worth asking yourself. Why you? Just because you know how to play does not mean you know you know how to teach. Or how to lead. How to spend time with kids. How to manage frustration and overwhelm. How to love children, even the difficult ones (especially the difficult ones). How to be consistent, predictable, and approachable. A good coach interrogates her ‘why’ before she even steps on the field. Preferably before she even applies for the job.

 Why am I here? Am I here to work my own shit out? Am I here to relive the good ol’ days? Am I here because it makes me feel important? Am I here because I don’t know where else to be?

They’re uncomfortable questions, in part because they do not assume best intention. Interrogating your why means flipping over the stone of who you are and bringing the shadows up to the light – because the shadows are where we move from in crisis. Impulse and instinct are a huge part of being around children. What are the patterns of your instinct? Who are you when shit gets hard? Being in charge does not necessarily make you a leader. So why you? Why me?

Of course it’s complicated. I am more accepting and loving towards my players and their mistakes than I am towards myself and my own. Coaching is a place for me to be radically kind and supportive and grateful towards their humanity because I struggle with that when it comes to my own humanity. Don’t worry… I’m working on that in therapy.

I’m also an oldest daughter: being responsible, consistent, and thoughtful is my middle name (also working on that in therapy). I love being the person you come to when you’re having a hard time. I love taking care. I love working hard, and learning, and watching who I become in a crisis. There’s no safer place than with me, and I work really hard to make it that way. My womanhood is tied up in this sport, for better or for worse.

But still: why me?  

I wrote last year, “Women’s soccer re-familiarized myself with the phrases, “I can”, and “I love”. I reveled in growing stronger, finally locating myself as here, now. We forget to whom our bodies answer to until we ask, or demand, them to answer to us. Women’s soccer taps into an energy field of masculinity without ever sacrificing the divine feminine. We work hard in this energy field of certainty, where it is only us and each other to trust.

We have a position to play, a job to do, a responsibility that runs deep into the ground. We move and flex as a collective that is loyal only to each other. Our victories are shared, our bodies are heat, our breaths are deep. We find and touch each other, hands, fingers, backs, arms – in support, in shared struggle, in elation, in disappointment. For those ninety minutes, we are women who run the world. We do not ask for permission, we do not shrink, we do not compromise, we do not accommodate. In this scrappy fight for victory, we are technical, collaborative, and joyful, even as we shove our bodies into each other. That field belongs to the women who go to battle on it.”

It's weird that my own words from two years ago summarize best what I’m trying to say now: Soccer is such a potent, pure source of who I am, a place where I need no reminder of where I belong, to whom my priorities lie, or what matters to me. My body knows what to do. All that is required of me is to jump in the jet stream.

Coaching is the jet stream now. It’s fun, and it’s tiring, and it’s meaningful, because women’s soccer is essential to a more just and beautiful world for everyone. I’ll coach it, I’ll play it, I’ll watch it, and I’ll fight for it’s place among us forever.

Tune in for more tomorrow!