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Blog Entry 26 of 30 Life Lessons Learned from Students
Hi, I'm Jerry. I live in the Pinery in Parker. I traveled to Columbia Middle School in Aurora for many years where I taught 7th and 8th grade language arts. Over time, I realized that students had just as much to teach me about life as I had to teach them about reading, writing, and literature. After I retired in June, 2005, I began writing this collection. I am currently on the seventh story, but plan on having about twenty stories in the finished collection.

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~JerryLaPre

My last basketball team
Contributed by: Jerry LaPre   on 6/30/2008

After fourteen seasons, my middle school basketball coaching career comes to a close.

My last Basketball Team

The summer after our championship season, I noticed I was really slowing down physically. I could no longer run or do other vigorous exercise. A neurologist diagnosed me with peripheral neuropathy, a common condition in long-term diabetics.

By this time, I had been living with diabetes for over twenty years, but neuropathy was the only complication that ever developed. Diabetes is a nasty disease, but it can be controlled if one is diligent. The day I was diagnosed in 1976, I vowed, this disease is not going to kill me.

But the peripheral neuropathy continued to slow me down. By the spring of 1999, I decided that would be my last season coaching basketball. I made this decision for several reasons. The main one was that Noelle was now four and I wanted to spend more time with her.

Coaching basketball is very draining and time-consuming. Another reason was that I had become more of a figurehead than an actual head coach. I had three assistants and I let them do most of the planning and coaching, even though two of them were volunteer assistants. I just didn't have the energy to devote the attention that the job demanded.

By the last game of the season, I had a falling out with a father who had coached the A team most of the season. Some players complained that he was favoring his own son so much that it was hurting the team. So I coached the last game in the post-season tournament and the volunteer assistant who had coached most of the season stayed home.

We lost the tournament game when our last-second shot rolled across the top of the basket and fell to the court. The game, our season, and my coaching career ended all at once. I felt bad for the players, but I was also glad it was over. I really wanted to find out why I was so slow and fatigued all the time. I made an appointment to see my neurologist as soon as the school year ended in June.

That season I learned that it's wrong to abdicate authority to a volunteer coach. My players were counting on me and I let them down. The way I was feeling that spring, I should have resigned before the season began. The fatigue I suffered from interfered with my judgment. If a similar situation arose in the future, I prayed I would exercise better judgment.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Jerry LaPre

Parker , CO

Jerry LaPre has posted 30 blog entries and 1 comment since joining on 5/31/2007. Jerry LaPre 's average blog rating is 5.
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