Over my fourteen years of life there have been a countless amount of people who have been great teachers, mentors, and coaches for me. But out of all those people there is one person who has stuck out the most. This person is someone who pushes me to do my best, supports me, believes in me, knows how to help me to succeed, and most importantly this person gave me a chance to prove myself in front of not only him and my team, but also my school friends and family. This man is my JV high school basketball coach, Coach John. Coach John is easily one of the best basketball coaches and teachers I have ever had the pleasure to have coach me and teach me about the game of basketball. I think that Coach John is easily the best choice for the Educator of the Year Award.
Now you understand why I nominated Coach John for this award. I couldn’t think of another person who would deserve this award perfectly. He taught me so much in just the couple of months that I knew him, and I can’t wait till next year so that he can teach me and help me improve my game even more.
Good is never good enough when it comes to Coach John’s expectations. If we win a game, it’s not a good win because he knows we can always do better. If we lose a close game it’s not a good game because he knows that if it was a close game that we could have won. If we make all of our shots but one, that just shows him that we can still do better. I think that is one of the reasons that we ended up winning a lot of games and also improving our foul shot percentage. Coach John also believed in every one of us on the team. He was always saying that we have a deep team which means he believes that everyone can play in any situation whenever they are needed. He also believed that we had the potential to be a top tier team and that we could hang with any team in the state of Delaware. This encouraged us to think we could win against every team that we played this year. Of course we didn’t win every game, but we went into every game knowing that we had a great chance to win, and if we lost, we left knowing that we knew that we could do better. Coach John’s expectations and his belief are why we had such a successful basketball season this year.

One of Coach John’s best attributes was his ability to make practice not only productive but also fun. Just like a teacher does to make classes fun for the students, Coach John made our basketball practices fun, but we also learned things and got things done. It made our team want to go to practice and want to try our hardest because we knew if we worked hard, we would be repaid with victories and occasionally a relaxed practice. Finally, one of my favorite things about Coach John is that he believed in me and gave me a chance. He didn’t have to pick me for the basketball team, but he saw something in me and knew that he could turn me into a good ball player, and he did. This year was easily my most successful basketball season of my life, and I owe all of that to Coach John for being a great coach who taught me a lot, gave me pointers, helped me work on things, and most importantly believed in me.
This year was my 9th grade year which means: new school, new people, and a whole new sports program. Luckily for me Coach John was also new to the program, so everyone got to start off on a fresh slate. That’s one of the best attributes Coach John has. He doesn’t pick favorites; he picks whoever will help the team the most. He picks whoever puts in the most work, the most hustle, the most drive to win, and most importantly the person with the most heart. I think that is one of the reasons that he is such a successful coach and led us to such a successful season. Another reason our team had such a successful season is because he teaches us and prepares us for our games and our opponents just like a teacher would prepare you for a test or quiz. Whether it’s the best team in the state or one of our rivals, we could always trust Coach John to prepare us for that game so that we l play to the best of our ability and most likely finish the game either winning or coming close and at least making it a good game. Those are two of the reason why I think that Coach John is one of the best coaches, and teachers, I have ever had known.