But more importantly, coaches have made athletics the most cost-efficient and educationally accountable aspect of secondary school. Nowhere in education do you find it as often as you do in school athletics that teachers are teaching what they want to teach, to students who are learning what they want to learn, and both are willing to work hour after hour on their own time, after school, to make certain that everything that can be taught is taught and everything that can be learned is learned. Coaches may not be the reason students come out for sports, but they're usually the reason students stay out for sports. Coaches don't give students ability, but they discover or develop it. Coaches make both the quantitative and qualitative difference.
Coaches are the reason some schools win more than others.
Coaches are the reason some schools have better sportsmanship than others. Coaches are the reason some schools have a more educationally based program than others. Coaches make the difference between a program of excesses and a program of education. Coaches are the critical link in the educational process of athletics, they are the critical link in the sportsmanship at contests, and they are the critical link in the traditions of success which some schools enjoy. It has always been so, and it always will be so.