By Brody Goucher Posted April 17, 2013
In every team sport, you have to have players that don’t play as much as the “starters” because they aren’t as talented as them, but are still just as big a part of the team as them.
In football, the starting eleven usually stays on the field unless they are winning or losing by a ton of points. I think that an athlete that sits on the bench and does not get a starting spot should not accuse a coach of playing favorites, but simply practice on his or her own time to get better. Starters earn their spots on the field or court, they don’t just walk out and expect to be a starter.
When an athlete joins a sport and has not practiced at all and still makes the team, his expectations should not be high because he did not earn his spot and obviously did not care about getting a starting spot if they did not put in the work.
A lot of the time coaches have to put up with parents nagging them to give their son or daughter more playing time, and that’s not fair to the coach when most of the time they make the best decision on who can give the team the best chance of winning.
While benching someone is a tough part of being a coach, cutting is much worse.
“Cutting kids is definitely the hardest part, it really sucks and makes you feel bad,” said coach Grant Beatty.
The next decision a coach has to make is when to sub one of his bench players in and that is also hard at times because the player that comes out often feels he did not do anything to deserve to be taken out.
“At the beginning of the season I sub randomly, but once I get a feel for guys, then I try and stay consistent because I feel like the players need to have that in order to be comfortable on the floor. I sub guys when they get lazy on D or stop boxing out. The best time to put a player in is when the guy on the floor playing his position is tired,” said Beatty.
There are many tough aspects of being a bench player such as not getting enough playing time and having to sit out late in a close game and feeling helpless.
“The toughest part for a bench player is coming into a game cold and trying to find a rhythm,” said Beatty.
