Coach Jones is a young man whose mind is strong. He is a club football coach in Panama City, Florida. He coaches a team with a low budget and about 10 players who actually show up. This team was called the Springfield Panthers. And we were just a struggling group of kids. If you have a team that goes through a lot of adversity you need a great leader of a coach and we had that.

Our best player was our running back Tyvon, who had frustration issues. Every now and again, Tyvon would get into a fight at practice and Coach Jones would simply make him take off his uniform and send him home. Tyvon was our only chance to win, but Coach Jones didn't care. He taught us that character was more important than winning and did not give the best player any special treatment.

Coach Jones was not one of those coaches who sat around waiting for practice. He was also in the Air Force, so his work day is longer than average. By the time practice comes around, he's already been up for over 14 hours. This showed us his dedication for coaching us. He was just a volunteer coach. He didn't have to be there for a struggling group of kids but he was and I respected that.

While being a tough looking guy, he still looked approachable. He was of average height and he was buff. He was always spitting out seeds and making jokes. Every time I ran to the sideline to get a new play, he would give me a handshake no matter how the play before went. This gave me confidence every time. Another thing he did was refer to me as “My quarterback.” When we were getting a helmet. he made sure I got a good one. He said, “I want my QB to be able to see while scoring touchdowns.” Little things like that boosted my overall confidence, which is key in football.

If you just looked at our team before a game started, you would most likely say, “They have no chance of winning”  or “where is their team?” These comments made sense because we had a poor looking group. You would look at the other teams sideline packed with tons of players and fans. Then you would look at our sideline which had only three coaches. But we had coach Jones which was all we needed.Our sideline never had a player on it. But we shocked a lot of people from the first whistle. When they had fresh faces on the field, we had the same 10 fighters who got the energy from our fighter mentality coach.

The team went through adversity, but we never hung our heads. After every game, no matter if it was a big win or loss, he would keep his emotions calm and tell us he’s proud of our heart. Then he would simply say, “Practice at 5:00 tomorrow.” The fact we were able to win half our games given our circumstances shows our coach was great. He gave a lot of kids living in struggle--including me--hope.