When most sport seasons end, numbers get crunched. As coaches, it’s easy for us to get caught up in this number crunching, especially as the media highlights our career wins, the titles we’ve won and the number of “Coach of the Year” awards we’ve received.

But any true coach knows that records are not what are important. Having the opportunity to work with athletes and make a difference in their lives is what is important. Coaches, like players, make a lot of sacrifices to develop winning teams, but most will tell you those sacrifices and successes are for the athletes—for the joy of watching players mature and grow.

Competition is an obvious part of the coaching life, resulting in either winning or losing. But God’s Word reminds us not to get so caught up in the results that we forget to take care of the flock—the athletes—who have been put under our watch.

Of course, we all want to win. Yet if we forget that we’re really working toward an imperishable crown (as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9:25), then we’ve lost sight of why we’re coaching in the first place. In other words, just as we live our lives to please the Good Shepherd, so too should we coach our players with the same goal. In the process, we’ll serve as examples to the sheep. 

One of my favorite things about John Wooden’s coaching was that he taught his players each year to put on their socks and tie their shoes properly. You’d think college-aged athletes could already do this, but Wooden took nothing for granted. He paid attention to the little things, which made the big things come more easily for his teams over the years.

Of course, Coach Wooden wanted to teach his players a lesson: If they were going to play in his program, they had to put aside what they wanted to do and follow his plans for the team. That discipline in the small things gave his teams great results, as they won 10 national championships and set an example for the rest of us how the little things make the biggest difference.

In 2001, golfer Annika Sorenstam dominated the women’s professional tour, winning eight tournaments and topping two million dollars in earnings. After that phenomenal year, Annika’s chief rival, Karrie Webb, commented that she’d eat her hat if Annika won eight tournaments in the coming year. The following season, Annika won eleven tournaments and earned nearly three million dollars in prize money.

Trouble and being troubled are two completely different things. Trouble is being down by a run, nobody on base, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and our worst hitter coming to the plate. Being troubled is having no strategy for this scenario and not being prepared to accept the possible consequences that are about to come.

As coaches, there will be many times when we will have to declare to our team, “Don’t worry, everything will be okay.” We might even complete our short speech with the same words that Jesus did: “Believe in me.” But if we haven’t demonstrated believability to our players, these words will have absolutely no value. Without having the same credibility that Jesus had, our words will be like wisps of air.

Those of us who watch a lot of sports programs on television have probably seen the St. Louis Cardinals’ “blanket” commercial. It begins with a man who wraps a red St. Louis Cardinals’ blanket around himself. As it turns out, the blanket is the one constant in his life as he grows up. As a child, he uses it as a cape when he runs up the steps, and he drapes it over his bed when he studies. It is on the seat when he learns to play the drums as a teenager, in the trunk when he moves out of the house, and around his girlfriend while they watch a movie. The commercial ends with the man wrapping the blanket around his child as these words come on the screen: “Without sports, what would we hold on to?”

Trouble often seems to be waiting around every corner of daily life, especially for coaches. Whether it is a troubled player, an unfair referee, a nagging parent or an unreasonable principal, coaches can count on difficulties. They come with the territory!

Thankfully, Jesus never pretended that life would be a luxury cruise. “You will have trouble,” He told His disciples. In fact, difficulties are guaranteed, an inevitable part of living in a fallen world. Jesus didn’t deliver the trouble; He just knew it was coming.