Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life

COACH: LESSONS ON THE GAME OF LIFE: Michael Lewis: W.W. Norton & Co.: Biography: 93 pages

As a mother with a teenage football player I was interested to read this book about life lessons learned from having an intensely driven coach. Author Lewis recounts his experiences with his high school baseball coach, Coach Fitz. This man coached with a passion that Lewis had never experienced before. In the book he recounts many of the uplifting and difficult lessons that Coach taught him that were often painful, but necessary to his growth into a purpose-driven young man. Coach Fitz taught his players to fight “the natural instinct to run away” when the going got tough, and that in order to achieve anything meaningful they would have to fight hard to get it. In contrast, you see that the parents of today’s players are less willing to allow their children to suffer from the results of breaking the rules or not giving the game their all. Responsibility and drive have been replaced with entitlement by these players and their parents.

Lewis makes the point that the lessons he learned from Coach Fitz did not make him a star athlete but did help him to grow into a purpose-driven and successful individual.

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