[Navajo4life]

Having coached youth sports for the past 15 years and now helping out on the high school level, there comes a time where coaches have to be role models for our young student athletes. Some of the kids that we coach come from homes with one parent and some that are living with grandparents and these young kids are looking for guidance and someone that can provide them with discipline and at the same time, listen to them when they have problems. I'm not talking about not understanding certain formations or alignments. I'm talking about problems that they may have at home, in the classroom or just in general. I think as coaches we can raise our voices to our players, but do it in a constructive way by trying to not embarrass the kid in front of his peers.

I know of a situation where a coach was out drinking with some of his fellow coaches and he made a terrible mistake in driving home that night, of course you can guess what happened to him. He was pulled over and arrested for DUI, now, this was his only mistake in the time that he has been coaching kids and he was truly embarrassed by the situation and was very remorseful. What he done then was face his problems head on and provided an example to his players what he had done was very wrong and that he had accepted the consequences for his actions by his school. It also provided a teaching moment for those kids, not about sports, but about life in general. To many times these kids see pro athletes get arrested for several things, they apologize, but they are still allowed to play the game they love, why? Because they are making that franchise money, however, when a coach does it, he is suspended by the league and fined. The kids today see all of it and hear all about it, but when it happens on the high school level, then our kids need to learn what true consequences are.

My question is this, should that coach be punished for the rest of his career because of 1 stupid mistake that he made that night?