The Milan News-Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Coaches have own language
Brian Cox
PUBLISHED: April 17, 2008
I spent some time the other day researching language courses, like the ones advertised on television where you can learn a new language in something like 42 minutes.
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I wasn't interested in French or German or Portuguese, however. No, I was convinced there must be a language course out there somewhere for high school coaches because it's clear they have learned to speak in a tongue all their own.
"Coachese," I'll call it.
It is a language most peculiar.
For example, in Coachese, there are few singular adjectives of high praise, and they are most commonly the more moderate ones.
A player may have had a "good" or "strong" performance, but words such as "great" or "tremendous" or "outstanding" are generally reserved for the team.
"She had a good game," a coach may say in Coachese. "We had a tremendous tournament."
That popular adage about there being no "I" in team? It originated in Coachese.
Coachese is not a particularly versatile language.
There are certain phrases, for example, that in Coachese are incredibly difficult to say, such as "We're a way better team than they are and we're going to whip the pants off them."
If a coach thinks that (and there are times when they do) and tries to express it, it comes out something like this: "They're a good, young team. We'll have to play our game and stay focused to win."
"Young" in Coachese often means "not too good yet."
It's also important to note that the future tense in Coachese is very tentative. Words such as "will" are replaced with "should;" "we're going to win" becomes "we hope to win" or the more assertive version, "we expect to win."
Another phrase that's almost impossible to say in the language is, "They whipped the pants off us."
If a coach thinks this (and they sometimes do), in Coachese it is expressed as: "The score doesn't reflect our performance," or "We didn't make the big plays when we needed them," or "We're a young team and they played their game."
Coachese, I have found, is an optimistic language. It touts the positive and abhors the negative. Unless - and this is a biggie - unless a coach believes a negative statement will prove motivational for the team.
Coachese grammar, however, precludes a coach from saying anything critical of a single player. If a coach is speaking Coachese, you will never hear him publicly say, "So-and-so dropping the ball cost us the game."
Coahcese is a language that encourages sharing the blame, although there really isn't a word in Coachese for "blame."
It's also a language of great expectations and has not a single word to denote complete satisfaction.
You will never hear a coach say, for example, "We're as good as we can be. There's nothing we need to work on. We're perfect."
There is, in fact, no word in Coachese for perfect.
The word "work" just fails to crack the top 100 most common words in the English language, according to most lists I came across.
But in Coachese? Work has to be in the top five. If a coach doesn't use the word work at least once every 10 sentences or so, he or she haven't mastered the language. Coaches most fluent in Coachese can squeeze "work" into every other sentence.
Other most common words in Coachese are "focus," "improve" and "effort."
A unique aspect of Coachese is one that took me a while to uncover. When interviewing coaches, I used to believe they were talking to me. I couldn't have been more wrong. I have come to realize that when coaches speak Coachese, they're always addressing their players.
So when they tell me, "We need to work harder" or "We're not playing up to our level" or "We executed well as a team," they're not really talking to me.
Coaches, I have learned, are always talking to their players.
Coachese is a fascinating language. Someone should compile a dictionary for it.
What I find most remarkable about it, though, is that the best coaches don't just speak Coachese. It is not just words and phrases to them.
The best coaches actually think that way.
Staff Writer Brian Cox can be reached at 429-7380 or bcox@heritage.com.
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