As a head football coach, I had three core values that I built the program around. These core values were always at the center of everything that I did within the football program. These core values were plastered all over the walls in our locker room and then our weight room. I have previously posted about the first two core values. The third core value on our list was “love your brother.”
The phrase “love your brother” can be broken down into three parts. First, is accepting your brother. When we put 40 or more people together to form a football team we have 40 different players along with 8 to 10 coaches and multiple people on the support staff. We are looking at 55 to 60 different personalities, different religions, different races, and different sexual preferences. So that takes us to the first part of “love your brother.” This means to accept your brother. We all have differences and personalities in our personal choices in life. You must not only tolerate differences but accept the differences within your teammates and coaches. This can also be transferred to a household, to a business, to a church or to any organization. Accept your teammate. Accept your coworker. Accept your peers in society.
The second part of “love your brother” refers to protecting your brother. Understand that your words and deeds will affect your brother. We must understand that what we say and do will affect our teammates and our coaches. As a coach we must understand that what we say and do will affect our players. We must understand the impact that we as adults and coaches have on the lives of young people. Parents have a tremendous impact on their children. Sometimes that’s positive, sometimes that’s negative. We as parents can only hope we have a greater positive impact than a negative impact on our children. We as coaches can hope that we have more of a positive impact on the lives of the young people that we coach. We must understand that what I say and do will affect my brother and know that we will be remembered by our deeds and words. And at the basic core of this aspect of “love your brother” and protect your brother is that we must all understand that the team is more important than the individual. That is true of a player. That is true of a coach. That is true of an athletic trainer. It is true of the strength coach. The same can be said as members of a business or a church or a school or a family. The team or the group is more important than the individual. We must teach our young people to understand the importance of the group over the importance of the individual.
The third and final aspect of “love your brother,” is to serve your brother. This is a very simple concept to understand because when we get to this point in our thinking we understand that our brother is more important than we are. We perform random acts of kindness for other people. We provide random acts of kindness for our teammates and coaches with the basic understanding that we will receive nothing in return. It’s very easy to be kind to someone that has power over you. However when you are kind to people that are beneath your level, then you understand that the individual cannot help you in return, then you are truly serving your brother. If you are nice to your teacher because you’re trying to get her or him to bump up your grade, then that has nothing to do with serving your brother. Serving your brother comes from a place of a pure heart and understanding you are helping because you truly love and care about your brother.
By accepting, protecting and serving your team mate, you have truly shown love to your brother. If we as high school football coaches can teach young people these three points of loving your teammate, they will have a greater chance of growing up to be productive citizens. To be a loving husband. To be a loving father. To be a positive and loving individual in church, in business and at home.
–Coach Greg King