Coaching at a high school level can be hard and fun at the same time because, especially with teenagers, you never know what will happen. Mr. Jimenez, a basketball and outdoor track coach says: “I enjoy working with student-athletes and making kids better at the sport they’re doing.” A coach’s main goal is to take the best out of athletes and show them that they have potential and that they can get amazing opportunities through sports. That’s mainly why it is so important during high school. He says that it’s truly worth it and that sports scholarships can help a lot of students, specifically if they want to attend a university outside of Wyoming.

Coaching students as a teacher has always been common, and it will never go out of style because as long as sports are a part of the high school experience, it will always be needed, and NCHS is a great example of it.

During four years of high school there’s a lot of pressure put on kids from their parents, their teachers, and themselves, but sports can actually be a welcome reprieve from those pressures if coaches are encouraging and make the activity fun. According to one NCHS athlete, “doing sports and getting your mind off academic work is the thing that has helped me the most during these last years. The relationship with students is amazing, but the relationships you build with other coaches are amazing as well, we lift each other up.” This same NCHS athlete also pointed out that even though coaches are also teachers, the bond athletes have with them and the experiences they share make these very different from regular student-teacher relationships. “They are always there when you need them and they understand perfectly what you’re going through because they’ve also been in that position,” said the athlete.

The process of becoming a coach includes getting an endorsement on your teaching certificate in the sport you want to coach. Classes at the university or at the coaches’ clinic are required, and they consist of Care and Prevention, the theory of the sport you are wanting to coach, 1st Aid/CPR Training, and Foundations of Coaching.

Though the coursework and certifications are not easy, the type of relationships formed between athletes and coaches are strong and lasting ones, and they are reciprocal. They not only help the students, but the teachers as well. Is that space we all need to get our minds off other important things, mostly school and work-related, and enjoy ourselves by doing what we like the most.