I've played sports pretty much for as long as my memory goes back. I've played for a lot of different teams, and the impact of each and every coach of a youth athletic team cannot be underestimated.

The impact of a coach can vary. Some are good, as most of mine were, and some can be detrimental, discouraging, and outright bad at what they do. These are the ones that can impact an athlete's career incredibly negatively. In my life, I was blessed with many incredible coaches from my youngest days up until now at UCF. Coaches are incredibly important and can make or break how someone feels about a sport.

In high school, I both ran cross country and played lacrosse. During my time there, I was surrounded by the polar opposite of the coaching spectrum during my time as an athlete. Being able to see first-hand the incredible side of a coach and the atrocious side of one gave me perspective on how much of an impact a coach can have.

I learned to love running in high school – even though it is not that big of a part of my life now – mainly because of who the cross country coach was. Coach Devon Hind was a man of great accomplishments and knew how to coach students not only for them to become better athletes, but also to become better people. In my opinion, a coach who is able to do both is not only rare but also incredibly special. His guidance during my high school years helped shape the way I look at the world as well as success.

While great coaches have touched my life, both in lacrosse and running, there have been instances in lacrosse in which I was driven away from the sport due to how certain coaches handled different situations and treated the players.

My junior year, I did not play lacrosse for the first time since I had started in 3rd grade due to a lot of differences with the coaching staff, specifically the head coach. I felt that he had crushed a sport I loved and treated players not as they should be treated. There is a certain amount of respect that goes into being a coach, and he had none of it.

Turning to one of the greatest coaches I had, I instead ran track. I returned my senior year after that coach was eventually pushed out, and I was relieved to see I was right for hating him.

This taught me how intensely a coach can have an impact on an athlete. While one coach was teaching our entire team how to be better people, one was failing to even produce a good team. I had a negative view of a lot of things around me when with one, while a hard-working and upbeat mentality around the other.

This is not supposed to just be a personal anecdote necessarily. However, for any athlete, there is a short list of coaches that have impacted their lives. When most people think of a good coach, there tends not to be much more than looking at how they understand the game. Which is indeed vitally important. But being able to understand teenage athletes is a very different skill set that not every adult has.

There is a large list of coaches that have impacted me in a positive manner, however, some have stuck out. The ones that stick out are important to our youth, like teachers and athletics coaches. They have the ability to impact a student's life for the better and are on the front lines of shaping our future generations. The adults we are exposed to other than our parents play a very heavy role in how we view the world and what we will become.

Other than the parents of a child, the adults he deals with on a daily basis can be the most important in helping prepare that child to be a well-rounded adult. Some of the most crucial years can be in high school, and coaches have the ability to impact young men and women in a way others do not.

The importance of athletics coaches cannot be overstated. Luckily, I have been blessed with many great ones in my life.