You’ll never guess how these guys spend their Friday nights!
It’s your typical Friday night after a long week of work and Chad Martin and Jesse Baker are both at the gym. No, it’s not that kind of gym. These guys could be celebrating the start of the weekend by doing something for themselves, but they’re not. Instead, both twentysomethings are spending their Friday evening coaching JR High basketball games at St. Joseph School.
Jesse is the head coach of the 6th-grade girls’ basketball team while Chad is the head coach of the 4th and 5th-grade boys’ basketball team and the assistant coach of the 6th-grade team.
How did this happen? Well, it’s quite simple. Chad and Jesse are both competitive, love basketball and wanted to give back to the community where they were raised. Chad has always been drawn to coaching and figured he would give it a shot when the opportunity presented itself. Jesse’s competitive juices started flowing when he was asked about coaching. He thought it sounded like a good challenge for himself.
Both guys have taken away quite a bit from the process so far. According to Chad, “Coaching is a lot harder than it looks, but it’s very rewarding. Especially once you start to see the kids working together and winning games, and having fun while doing it.”
Jesse echoed these sentiments. “I’ve learned that after a tough loss when coaching young girls, expect there to be a lot of tears,” he said. “When you take time with the kids and try to be helpful, they respond well and improve both individually and as a team.”
Not only have Jesse and Chad learned a lot, they also really enjoy coaching the kids and watching them improve during the basketball season. “I’ve particularly enjoyed seeing the girl’s improvements in terms of skillset and competitiveness,” Jesse said.
Chad’s thoughts were similar, as he said, “The most enjoyable part is seeing the kids improve. Everyone has improved in some way and it definitely shows. A lot of our players have gained more confidence in games this year which has helped a lot.”
Here at A.M. Transport, we have four key values that Chad and Jesse are actively exhibiting through their actions:
1. Integrity
2. Commitment
3. Consistency
4. Community
Both guys chose to step out of their comfort zone and are displaying a quality of leadership that we all strive to achieve—and they’re having a blast while doing it!
And the best part of it all is they want to do it again next year!