Coaching

“ COACH. To prepare a student to pass an examination; to make use of the aid of a private tutor.
He is putting on all steam, and "coaching" violently for the Classical Tripos.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d. p. 10.
It is not every man who can get a Travis to coach him.—Ibid., p. 69.
COACHING. A cant term, in the British universities, for preparing a student, by the assistance of a private tutor, to pass an examination. ”

“ If we, as coaches, lose the true sense of the value of football and get to a point where we cannot contribute to a boy progressing spiritually, mentally, [5] and physically, we will be doing this wonderful game of football a great injustice by remaining in coaching.
The coaching profession is honorable and dignified and we football coaches are in a position to contribute to the mental development and desirable attitudes which will remain with the boys throughout their lives. We have the opportunities to teach intangible lessons to our players that will be priceless to them in future years. ”

“ We stress the point frequently that coaching is teaching of the highest degree, and a good coach is a good teacher. It is not what you and your assistants know about football that is going to win the games, but rather what you are able to teach your players. In order to give our coaches an opportunity to improve their coaching techniques, we have them get up at staff meetings and explain and demonstrate various points. The other coaches will pretend they do not understand the coach who has the floor, and he must explain and answer the questions to our satisfaction. ”

“ The worst of coaching—I speak now as an expert—is that it is so difficult to know what to say when a lady whirls her bat twice round her head, gives a little shriek, gets the ball on the knee, and says, "What ought I to have done then?" ”

“ My work here, so far as it touches men, is very similar to coaching work. It comes down to picking the good ones, sorting them out, weeding, weeding all the time. You like those particular three boys you referred to? ”

“ An admiring critic of coaching in its last decade enlarged with great satisfaction upon the complete dissimilarity between the modern “artists” and the “workmen” of old time. Their change of character and appearance had kept pace with the improvements in the different points of their profession. ”

“ I have not the vanity to suppose that I can contribute anything more racy or better told than much that has gone before, but having engaged in coaching as a matter of business, and in partnership with business men, when and where coaches were the only means of public travelling, and having driven professionally for upwards of four years, I have had the opportunity of looking behind the scenes, and have had experiences which cannot have fallen to the lot of most gentlemen coachmen, and certainly will fall to the lot of no others again. ”

“ It is quite true that when coaching was a most important business, and when the component parties—contractors, coachmen, horsekeepers, and horses—sprang into existence, apparently for the purpose of carrying it on, there was a professional caste about the whole affair which kept it distinct and separate from all others. A proprietor was a big man, and his importance was measured by the ground he covered. ”

“ It is said that the chief of the great coaching trust in one of our universities earns a salary greater than was ever paid to any honest teacher. His function is to take the man who has spent the term in idleness or dissipation, and by a few hours' ingenious coaching to enable him to write a paper as good as that of a real student. ”

“ However, as tastes differ, there will always be a certain number of old stagers who, denouncing steam, will talk with rapture of the palmy days of the road, and 273 of their delight when they went "coaching, a long time ago." ”

“ Of coaching there are two kinds: Eastern coaching, with well-groomed full-fed horses, who are never worked harder than is good for them; with silver-plated harness, and coach with the latest springs and running gear, umbrella rack, horn, lunch larder, and what not; with footmen or postilions, according to the degree of style, to run to the horses' heads at the first hitch; with the gentleman driver in cream box coat and beribboned whip ”

“ Giving his ideas on coaching to a young gentleman who was on the box with him, on his way to college, he said:—“Soldiers and sailors may soon learn to fight; lawyers and parsons go to college, where they are crammed with all sorts of nonsense that all the Nobs have read and wrote since Adam—of course, very good if they like it—but to be a coachman, sir, you must go into the stable almost before you can run alone, and learn the nature of horses and the difference between corn and chaff. ”

“ The coaching systems at the universities differ, but there is generally a head coach, who is assisted by graduates, each of whom pays especial attention to one set of men, one to the men in the centre of the line, one to the backs, another to the ends, &c. ”

“ By the time men have reached their University eleven they have generally mastered the elementary principles of the game, and require more practice and experience, keeping up to the mark rather than coaching. ”

“ To form anything at all like an adequate idea of the Coaching Age, it is first necessary to discover how people travelled before that age dawned. As a picture is made by contrasted light and shade, so is the story of the coaching2 period only to be properly set forth by first narrating how journeys were made from place to place before the continuous history of wheeled traffic begins. ”

“ We think we see a hackney-coach moving out of its ordinary patience, and hear it say, "You there, who sit looking so scornfully at me out of your carriage, are yourself the thing you take me for. Your understanding is a hackney-coach. It is lumbering, rickety, and at a stand. When it moves it is drawn by things like itself. ”

“ In the vast majority of cases we do not, and cannot, know; for if one thing be more certain than another, it is that we are better informed in classic and mediæval lore than in the story of our forbears of two or three generations ago, and that most of the papers and documents necessary to a full and particular history of coaching have been destroyed. ”

“ Analogous results hold for the player's successful hits and for the coaching that required them. All this is no result of abstractions or of bare theory. It is the result of having the will to play the game. It is the absolute truth that results from joining definite practical issues.
Returning to life, we must say: If our assertions have a determinate meaning, they get their concrete workings through counselling determinate individual deeds. Each deed, as an individual act, is irrevocable and is absolutely what it is. ”

“ His greatest effort is necessary to force himself to work. In such a mental condition a vigorous and enthusiastic appeal from the coach may

supply the needed stimulus and stir him to sudden display of all his strength.
I recently conducted a series of experiments on college athletes to determine whether coaching could actually increase a man's strength when he was already trying his ``best,'' and whether he could continue to work after he was ``completely exhausted.'' I put each man at work on machines which allowed him to exert himself to his utmost and measured his accomplishment. ”

“ Cly-faker, a pickpocket.
Coach, a private tutor. Originally University, but now general. Any man who now trains or teaches another, or others, is called a coach. To coach is to instruct as regards either physical or mental acquirements. A private tutor is sometimes termed a RURAL COACH when he is not connected with a college. At Rugby a flogging is termed a “coaching.”
Coach-wheel, or TUSHEROON, a crown-piece, or five shillings.
Coal, money; “post the COAL,” put down the money. The phrase was used by Mr. ”

“ Some persons know how to manage this haste, and breakfast and dine in the cracking of a whip. They stick with their fork, they joint, they sliver, they bolt. Legs and wings vanish before them like a dragon's before a knight-errant. But if one is not a clergyman or a regular jolly fellow, one has no chance this way. To be diffident or polite is fatal. It is a merit eagerly acknowledged, and as quickly set aside. At last you begin upon a leg, and are called off.
A very troublesome degree of science is necessary for being well settled in the coach. ”

“ In short, they are half-way up it before a horse touches his collar; and we must take every advantage with such a fast coach as this, and one that loads so well, or we should never keep our time. We are now to a minute; in fact the country people no longer look at the sun when they want to set their clocks—they look only to the Comet. But, depend upon it, you are quite safe; we have nothing but first-rate artists on this coach.” “Artist! artist!” ”

“ A coach horse, although he has apparently few opportunities of employing his intelligence to his own advantage, whose life is spent in the stable, except when taken to the forge, or to the horsepond, will evince to his employers, in spite of this monotony, some habits and tastes which, if he is indulged in them, will nearly double his value. For instance, every coach horse has [Pg 48] a favourite place in a team, and will go well and do well in that place ”

“ The stage-coachman likes the boys on the road, because he knows they admire him. The hackney-coachman knows that they cannot admire him, and that they can get up behind his coach, which makes him very savage. ”

“ To pass then to the merits.
One of the greatest helps to a sense or merit in other things is a consciousness of one's own wants. Do you despise a hackney-coach? Get tired; get old; get young again. Lay down your carriage, or make it less uneasily too easy. Have to stand up half-an-hour, out of a storm, under a gateway. Be ill, and wish to visit a friend who is worse. Fall in love, and want to sit next your mistress. ”

“ And all this for eighteen guineas! Nothing said, nothing written; her face was her fortune, and I thought, mine too. She’s too good for the coach; she ought to ride, to carry a lady; appears a perfect lamb. ”

“ It is then that, with worldly wisdom, the first comer hastens to secure the best berth in the coach for himself, and to make the most convenient arrangement for his baggage before the arrival of his competitors. Our youth, who was gifted with little prudence, of any sort, and who was, moreover, by the absence of the coach, deprived of the power of availing himself of his priority of choice, amused himself, instead, by speculating upon the occupation and character of the personage who was now come to the coach office. ”

“ The educator follows the same order, and both insist on long and diligent practice; but the trainer of the body cannot always make a man an athlete, nor can the trainer of the mind make everybody an orator. There are three essentials requisite for success—natural aptitude, proper teaching, and long practice; and moreover there must be a will on the part of both teacher and pupil to persevere. The natural ability is by far the most important element. Training, however complete, may break down utterly if the speaker lacks nerve. ”

“ Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of every week from now till amateur night, a month off, I’ll coach you. I’ll make you as good as I am; and nobody could do more for you. My act’s over every night at 10:15. Half an hour later I’ll take you up and drill you till twelve. I’ll put you at the top of the bunch, right where I am. You’ve got talent. Your style’s bum; but you’ve got the genius. ”

“ These activities do not in themselves produce excellent qualities of character or high standards of conduct, but the teacher—whether he be called a coach or a trainer or a professor of hygiene—who sets a good example and who insists that every game played, and every contest, whether it be in a handball court between college chums or on the football field between college teams, shall be clean and fair, is using in the right way one of the opportunities present in the entire college life of the student, for the formation of fine character. ”

“ And now, I began to wonder at myself for being in the coach, and to doubt whether I had sufficient reason for being there, and to consider whether I should get out presently and go back, and to argue against ever heeding an anonyinous communication, and, in short, to pass through all those phases of contradiction and indecision to which I suppose very few hurried people are strangers. ”

“ But we believe that those educators whose first, middle, and last question in education is, "What is the disciplinary value of a study?" have mistaken the primary problem of education. Just as in the proper training of the body, the strength and skill of a professional athlete are, in no sense, the true aim, but physical soundness, health, and vigor; so in mind culture, not extraordinary skill in mental gymnastics of the severest sort, is the essential aim, but mental soundness, integrity, and motive. The under-lying question in education is not, How strong or incisive is his mind? ”

“ No one has profited more by the fermentation of which I speak, in pedagogical circles, than we psychologists. The desire of the schoolteachers for a completer professional training, and their aspiration toward the 'professional' spirit in their work, have led them more and more to turn to us for light on fundamental principles. And in these few hours which we are to spend together you look to me, I am sure, for information concerning the mind's operations, which may enable you to labor more easily and effectively in the several schoolrooms over which you preside. ”

“ For the hand stands for use, for service, and for unyielding integrity; and it may be confidently asserted on the conviction of observation, experience, and a studious consideration of historic facts, that its drill and discipline as enforced in the world’s workshops, and in the best of existing Manual-training schools, results in a far greater degree of mind development than is produced by any exclusively academic course, and hence that Manual Training is the most important of all methods of education. ”

“ To-day He is pointing you and me, not to the temporary honour of an athletic victory, but to the eternal honour of gaining the mastery over our appetites for the sake of keeping our bodies, minds, and hearts for His own indwelling. And He, Himself, is our Coach, doing something which no other coach can—remaining constantly beside us, within us, establishing that wonderful endurance—that indescribable something within us which strives and strives and conquers! ”