Tell Me Who I Am

A Proactive Coaching podcast interview with Jerry Gaines — husband, father, grandfather, athlete, coach, teacher, mentor, follower of Jesus, author of Forty Stories High, Proactive Coaching speaking team member, and Virginia Tech's first African American scholarship athlete — hosted by Bruce Brown as part of the "Greatest Coaches You've Never Heard Of" series. Topics covered: turning points where decisions were made for him (integrating the local white high school as a senior, Virginia Tech recruiting its first Black athletes, leaving the Army just as a new high school needed a Spanish teacher and track, football, and cross country coach); earning his keep rather than being given anything; the mentee who broke his long jump record; the philosophy rooted in his father's homemade Little League field and the day his dad refused to play without the team's two white players; "tell me who I am" — kids' deepest need to know they're somebody; loving kids as the most consistent coaching strategy; the stories of Helen and Cliff and the primacy of relationships; "glorious selfishness" and being otherly in your thinking, modeled on God's sacrifice; whether kids have changed (the needs haven't — the environment has); the crying girl at prom with everything but her parents' attention; and his favorite audiences — adolescents and the people who teach them.