All it takes is one coach by Kaylee

All it takes is one coach by Kaylee - January 2025 Scholarship Essay

Throughout my time in school, I’ve had many influential adults and mentors. Many of these people have made a significant impact on me as a person and my scholastic journey. However, there’s one adult that made the biggest impact on me as a scholar and student-athlete. This person was my basketball coach Lamar Russell.
Coach Lamar made a big impact on me not only as an athlete but as a person. He was my basketball coach for two years during my freshman and sophomore years of high school. Throughout these two years, my Basketball knowledge grew tremendously. We would work hard and practice doing drills to help our skills, but in addition, we would also have fun, which as he would say was always one of the most important parts of basketball. He would always emphasize putting in hard work but along with that having fun. This made many of us look forward to practice and even when having a bad day at school would give me something to look forward to afterwards as an outlet. He created a family.
Along with creating a positive basketball environment, he also made us better people. When I first started playing for Lamar my freshman year I truly lacked confidence and often beat myself up for small things. I was afraid of messing up. However, Lamar recognized this and assured me that mistakes are okay, because if you never try something, how do you know that you can’t do it? He quickly helped to build up my confidence and even when I didn’t believe in myself, he did. If I ever had an issue or problem, I knew I could talk to Lamar about it concerning basketball or any problem life threw at me, because to him it was bigger than basketball. It was a family.
All it takes is one Coach.