By By Chandler Myers
It’s said that patience is a virtue, and it’s hard not to agree. Patience is an important quality looked for in all aspects of life. Everyone has this quality and really it’s a strength that is attained over time.
Everyone has to learn to be patient especially athletes and coaches.
Young athletes have the tendency to be impatient when they might be losing more than they are winning. These athletes are looking for immediate success and don’t realize the amount of time and work they will have to put in to ultimately become successful.
This is where coaches come in and teach their players how they become winners. Coaches have to instill that drive and motivation into their players that improves them mentally and physically.
Physically, a player might have all the talent in the world, everything it takes to make a play, but mentally if that player does not have a sound mind and the patience to complete his abilities all of those physical attributes won’t help.
At times, the coaches themselves become impatient. A coach is like a general leading his men into battle. If one of his players steps out of line everything could possibly go to hell. More often than not, coaches will jump on a new player for a mistake instead of just explaining where the miscue happened and how it needs to be fixed. This is seen all the time whether it’s on TV for a professional or college game or even a high school football game.
Eventually, the player begins to argue back and then it causes a big blowup for that team.
If coaches showed a little more patience in explaining to their players exactly what caused the problem it could benefit not only a single player, but an entire team in the long run.
Again, everyone needs patience and some have more than others.
For example, Alabama and Auburn fans have to be patient for 11 games before they can play each other and see which team earns bragging rights. They also need to show that quality if one of the teams is having a rough season. Who knows it could turn around the next week and that team could be flying high again.
Even the sports editor of a small-city paper needs to learn to be patient. That patience needs to be spread out and include work and a personal life. Making calls repeatedly to a coach or a source can put someone in a groove and cause them to pour those types of calling patterns out into the world outside of work.
The difficult part of patience is not learning how to be patient, but learning to balance that patience.
Sometimes being impatient is necessary and usually for me it’s caused by excitement.
I’m learning day-after-day how to be more patient and think it’s gone pretty well so far. The thing that has to be realized that is that if that person is not able to answer your call or get right back to you, in time they will.
So just sit back and relax, and being patient will come naturally.
Chandler Myers is sports editor of the Atmore Advance. He can be reached at 368-2123.