The relationship between coaches and athletes is very important. Sometimes, coaches forget about the fact that athletes are normal, ordinary people and have life outside the sport. In this paper I argue that coaches to treat their athletes as an individual person with their own, unique personal life. Athletes are going to school, have families and friends and coaches need to accept that it’s not only the sport that matters. The problem is that many times coaches only see them as an athlete and not as a human being. Not knowing what is going on outside of the sport, or just simply what is going on with the athlete’s life, coaches can cause serious issues, injuries to their athletes. For a better understanding, ontology provides a good approach to this issue and I am going go give an example in swimming.
Ontology is one of the sub theme of metaphysics and provides with approaches to understand the ‘essence’ of what is to be a human being better. One of the perspectives that could be used to better understand the above mentioned issue is means vs. ends. If coaches see their athletes as a mean, they only care about their position as a coach, their salary, and the credit they got for their athlete’s achievement as a coach. On the other hand, if the coaches see their athletes as an end, they actually care about the athlete’s performance, improvements and usually care about their personal life itself.
Being a swimmer and a coach at the same time gives me a better understanding what is going within the “doors”. When I was younger I didn’t really care if my coach cared about my life outside of the pool, but when I got older and got busier with school and my job as a swimming coach, I realized that it is very important for a coach to know what is going on with the swimmers. In this way the coach can have a better understanding of that person, and can help him/her to achieve their goals and make improvements over time. It is a personal experience from last year, and saw it many times as well that some of the coaches see their swimmers as a mean. They don’t care if the swimmer has a bad day, or has problems within family or does poor at the school, the coach only cares about pushing the swimmer so he/she will get credit for the swimmers if she/he does well on the competitions. Another serious issues are injuries. It is very common for swimmers to have shoulder problems, so did I last year. Even though I told my coach that it really hurt and I had to see a physiotherapist 3 times a week, he said it is part of swimming, just swim push through it. He just wanted me to swim fast so I could make finals and he could get credit for me. Beside my shoulder issue, I had tough times in the school since I was doing my first year and English wasn’t my first language. I think it is really important for a coach to know all of these, and support the swimmers as much as he/she could to make the swimmers feel good about her/himself and
