Sport-Specific Contexts
Your coach is probably also your teacher, or your principal, or someone you see in the hallway every day of your academic life.
That’s different from college or professional sport. The relationship doesn’t end when practice ends. The authority extends into other parts of your life. And that changes the dynamic in ways that are worth thinking about before they cause a problem.
Read this passage slowly.
Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account.
Hebrews 13:17 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
Have confidence in your leaders. The instruction assumes a relationship built on genuine authority — the leader who is watching over, who will give account, who has genuine responsibility for the people in their care. The high school coach-teacher occupies a uniquely weighty version of this. They are responsible for your academic development and your athletic development simultaneously. They see you in contexts that most coaches never see — in the classroom when you’re struggling, in the hallway between classes, at school events that have nothing to do with sport. They have a fuller picture of who you are than most coaches will ever have.
That full picture is an advantage if you let it be. The coach who knows you as a whole person — not just as an athlete — is in a position to develop you as a whole person. The athlete who shows up in the classroom the way they show up in practice is the athlete who earns the trust that produces the best coaching relationship.
The dual relationship also creates a specific temptation: to separate your performance in the classroom from your relationship with the coach in athletic contexts. To think that the grade and the playing time are unrelated. They are more related than you might think — not because your coach will punish bad grades with the bench, but because the integrity of a person who is excellent in all their obligations is visible and it earns the kind of confidence that produces the best coaching.
The coach who knows you as a whole person is positioned to develop you as a whole person. Show up in the classroom the way you show up in practice. Integrity is always visible.
Is there a gap between how you show up athletically and how you show up academically? What would it look like to close it?
Honest and forward-looking. The question respects the athlete’s self-knowledge without requiring public confession.
Show up fully in every context your coach sees you in. Integrity in all of it earns the relationship.
This devotional addresses the specific dual authority of the high school coach-teacher. It does not apply in college or professional contexts.