Today marked the official transition from football to basketball season for us. Devin, my oldest son and an 18-year-old senior, played his first basketball game of the season tonight. Unfortunately, I had to miss it, but my wife called me to say that once during the game, our team made an incredible tackle…so I guess football season isn’t quite out of their system yet.

I have mixed emotions about basketball season. I really don’t like it quite as well as I like football—probably because I was never any good at it. I tended to play basketball the way I played football, too—usually fouling out relatively early on in the game.

The sad thing is that I had a coach who capitalized on that and would encourage my bull-in-a-china-shop behavior, pointing me toward a good player on the other side he wanted taken out. At the time, I thought that was kinda cool—it gave me a sense of accomplishment that I could actually do something for my team. In retrospect I’m a bit horrified by the life lesson there.

Fortunately, Devin has had a few coaches who have cared more about the athletes as student-athletes, emphasizing their academics first. Even better, he’s had some who cared more about behavior than even academics. And at least one who was first and foremost concerned with character growth above all: Mike Ellson, who was his AAU travel basketball coach several years ago. Here’s the cool thing, too: Devin realizes that what Coach Ellson taught him will help him not only on the basketball coach, but in life.

That’s the kind of coach I want to be for my own children, the students I teach, and the adult youth leaders I train.