Coach that Influenced me Positively

Throughout my years of schooling so far, there have been a lot of teachers and coaches that have positively influenced my life. One of these coaches that have stood out so far above the rest was Coach Andy Smith. I started my school basketball career in 7^th grade, this was also Coach Smith’s first year of coaching basketball for the school. So as you can imagine, we were both rather nervous. At this point in my basketball career, I completely focused on the offensive game. Coach Smith taught me that there’s more to the game than just scoring. He stresses defense, which was the weak point of my game.  He also put a lot of focus on foul shooting, and we took on average 20 to 30 foul shots every practice.  I thought at first that it was kind of weird, that Coach Smith rarely yelled. He was one of the more quiet coaches that I’ve played for. Practices usually consisted of running, shooting foul shots, running, plays, scrimmaging and then more running. But coach must’ve been doing something right, because we recorded a 7-3 record that year, good enough for 2^nd place in the division. The next year I played for coach again, and I kept improving my game with his help. My most memorable game of the season was against Tonawanda. We were down by 10 points at half time, and came back to tie the game up and send it into overtime. Then we took a large lead in overtime, going up by about 8 or 10 points.  With one minute left, a timeout was called. Coach Smith said “Play hard, they could still come back.” I replied with “Not against our defense!” Coach didn’t like that. He told me that if I didn’t stop being so cocky that I’d find myself on the bench. I don’t think I said another word for the rest of the season.