Charley Bartelmay grew up playing basketball, swim, tennis, and football. He began to focus on basketball and tennis in high school, but did not choose to pursue playing as an athlete in college, focusing instead of ministry work in his time at college. He got his first taste of coach as a summer parks/rec tennis coach in his senior year of high school. He found his enjoyment in coaching and seeing his players improve.
After starting a youth ministry position at Brookfield, Ohio, he saw a unique opportunity to combine his love for youth work and sports, and had the privilege of coaching youth soccer (4th and 5th grades). He then moved to Williamsburg to work as a student ministry director at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, and sought out an opportunity to coach football and basketball at a local public middle school (James Blair Middle School). During his time as a coach, he is learning the game better and providing both coaching and character growth for his players.
Charley joined us to talk about how his life as a Christian influences how he coaches and interacts with his players.
When possible, Charley's story is captured in his own words. There has been some editing and reorganizing to support clarity and consistency.
Gameplan
pD: What traits have you developed through your coaching?
Charley: I feel like I'm a lot more disciplined now; one, because coaching is such a time commitment, I can't just say "I have a couple hours to play video games," because when you have practice from 3-5, 4-7, whatever it ends up being, you have to be intentional with your time.
Also, James Blair's head coach's philosophy is 3-D football: dedication, discipline, and detail; those are habits that I've developed as I've bought into the philosophy of our football program. I think those three are traits and habits that I've developed since being a coach here.
Dedication, Discipline, and Detail
Leadership is another big one I've been able to develop; I'm on staff at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church as a student ministry director, and there's an element of leadership there. I've seen my ability to lead in my profession grow significantly because of my leadership skills I've developed this past year coaching basketball and football at James Blair. Those are the traits I've really developed.
pD: What ways have you seen your leadership grow?
Charley: The biggest is that I'm more comfortable talking to other adults. I was an assistant coach on both teams, and I was usually the first one at the school. Other adults had to listen to me as I was reiterating what the head coach was saying, and I learned to work with the adults better. We're fortunate at our church to have a solid leadership team for student ministries, so even though I'm the paid staff, I'm also one of the youngest on that team. So just working with other adults who are older than me, and more mature, I'm still able to develop that leadership of leading those who are older than me. That was a fairly new concept when I got here that I had to work through when I got to this position.
pD: Talk a little about the detail aspect. You've talked about the dedication and discipline; how does detail play into your coaching?
Charley: For example, you really got to know what you're talking about, and know the game well. We're going through some of our playbook with football, and we were setting up chairs in the office and walking through the plays ourselves that we'll be teaching our players starting in the summer.
We need to know the playbook, and I'm going to be coaching running backs this year. We run a Wing T, so that's a lot that I have to know, because Wing T is all about misdirection and handoffs, so I need to make sure my backs are doing what they're supposed to do, reading their blocks well, knowing where they're supposed to go. It's such a timing offense, so if the details aren't there, the plays just aren't going to work.
But you can't teach what you don't know, you can't pull from what you don't know, so if one of our guys gets tackled five yards in the backfield, and we don't know why, we can't make those adjustments. From a relational standpoint, it's easy to be a coach who just yells and screams, but if you are coach who pays attention to details, and knows what's going on in your students' lives, you can notice that a player isn't with it today. If you know that player has a terrible home situation, instead of yelling at him, you're able to ask him "is everything good at home? You seem out of it today."
A good example is, during summer football camp last year, we had a player who got there about 40 minutes late, and the whole time we were asking "Where is he?" He shows up wearing his full gear riding a bike because his mom forgot to pick him up from somewhere else, and he showed that commitment to the team. Understanding that detail, instead of punishing him for showing up to practice late, we actually applauded him for riding his bike in full uniform just to make it to practice even though he was late. So understanding the detail of students' lives, from a coaching standpoint, I believe, is essential, because it helps you manage your players and your team, and helps your student-athletes grow better.
pD: How have some of these habits carried over to other aspects of your life?
Charley: I think the big one is in work; I've seen growth in my leadership and comfort level with being in a leadership role. Even in some of the administrative side of my job, I've gotten used to doing some admin stuff with coaching. I'm a very hands on learner, so I pick up and work through things better than just hearing a concept and getting it. As I've got the hands-on experience with doing admin stuff, like watching a team mom who's excellent, so organized, watching how she does some of that stuff, I've been able to apply it to ministry, including one of the ways we now reach out to students on their phones.
How can I best the at whatever role?
Personal life, I'd say I just think through that 3-D paradigm, like: "how can I be the best husband, employee, son, or whatever role? How can I think through this, using Scripture first and foremost, but also, am I dedicated to this? Am I putting enough detail into this?" I'll catch myself asking those things. The basketball head coach asked during tryouts, "Why are you doing this? What's your why?" That's a question I ask myself a lot, "What's my why? Why do I want to do this?" So that's another principle I've adopted from another coach.
What's your why?
pD: What's one of the biggest challenges you've faced, either in coaching or life in general?
Charley: Two things come to mind for me. First, when I had to give up sports, after my final high school game, because I knew there was a good chance I wasn't playing at the next level. I had just put so much of my identity in being a basketball player, all the hours in the driveway, all the training, was just going to end. I remember we got eliminated in the state playoffs; about halfway, we were down by 23, and I remember thinking "Yeah, it's ending." And I'm playing the last few minutes of my high school career fighting back tears, as I'm trying to play hard and finish strong, but knowing it might be ending.
My biggest challenge was putting my identity in something more important, but at the same time realizing that's not where I should be putting my identity, so finding a good source of where my identity should be was what helped me confront that challenge.
In regards to coaching, the last game of this past season of football was tough because I coach 7th and 8th grade; half my team leaves each year. It's not like high school where I get some players for three or four years as a player. At most I get them for two, so it's hard missing these kids. That was the hardest part of coaching, is when the season ends, because I am so intentional about trying to build relationships with the students, so it's one of the hardest parts for me when they leave.
Ultimately, this player does not need me
Then I have to ask, am I emotional because I think they need me, or I'm emotional because I just love these players, and I'm going to miss them? I think I have to be careful because a lot of coaches think they're more important than they actually are, because coaching is important, but ultimately this player does not need me, per se. It's more, I had the privilege to coach them; when I go to watch them play JV football, and I can meet them at the gate after the game, that relationship will still be there. I don't see them every day, but it's still there.
That also stems from where you put your identity, and coaching is so time-consuming, it's dangerous for that to be your identity, particularly as a youth sports coach. It's so much more about people than just your program, more about life lessons; I saw a tweet the other day saying "youth sports is 50% life lessons, 25% winning, 25% losing." That perspective is so important as well.
pD: Talk to me about what you've gotten from integrating your faith and your coaching.
Charley: It's a concept I'm working out in my own head right now, but as a Christian, my faith is in Jesus, and the gospel is in the center of my life, of everything I do, including coaching. I've been thinking out myself, what it looks like to be a gospel-centered coach.
So the first question that needs to be answered is: "What is the gospel?" And if you are a Christian and can't answer that, I think you need to go see a pastor, you may need to step back and hit the reset button; go to Scripture, figure it out. If the gospel is at the center of everything we're doing, it should affect how we coach as well.
I think you have to ask also: "What's it look like to live out the gospel?" And again, if you don't know how you'd answer that, I'd encourage you to reach out to a pastor, work through what that looks like.
That's for life, not just football
Once you have that understanding, I think it's really important to set that personal coaching philosophy. At a coaching clinic at W&M, Mike London shared his philosophy of Faith, Family Football, in that order. So his faith is most important, then family, then football comes third. At James Blair, the philosophy is the 3-D that I explained earlier. We also tell our kids: that's for life, not just for football. It starts at home, at school, and should carry over to the football field.
Almost any issue you run into falls into one of those things, a lack of detail, discipline, or dedication. If I were planning my own personal philosophy, it comes down to faith again being most important in my life, and then community, brotherhood, whatever term you want to use, and then competing, not necessarily winning, but leaving it all out there and not giving up, and doing everything with intentionality and excellence. You can't be perfect, but you can be excellent. If you do your job well, it shows up.
As I've been thinking through that, it leads to what I call missional coaching; what is your mission, what are you hoping to achieve, and then cross-examining it with Scripture if you're trying to do this gospel-centered coaching. And then I think what it really comes down to is the relationship with students; because of my faith, I care more about the heart of my player than the results of the player. Doesn't mean I don't get on then when they make a bad pass on the court and ends up in a fast break. I still yell "What were you thinking?," but at the end of the day, my hope is that my players realize they are not defined by a loss.
Heart over results
With Blair basketball, our 7th grade team won the league, went into the last week undefeated. We had already locked up the league title, but we laid an egg, we lost our last two, and ended 6-2 and won the league on a tiebreaker. Very different feel from being undefeated league champs. After our first loss, that was my message to our players "you are not defined by this; we don't care about you any less because you didn't end the season undefeated."
In that game we were losing, one of our players, out of character, was pulled from the game and punched a chair. I asked him, "You good, man?" He said "Coach, I'm doing everything I can, and it's not good enough." I immediately put my arm around him, pulled him in, and told him "Hey man, sometimes that's life. We do everything we can, and it's not enough. And that's OK. We get back up and keep pushing through."
That's where that relational side kicked in, the game was still going on, but him freaking out that he couldn't get it done was more important than whatever was going on on the scoreboard. That's the next biggest part, understanding that relationship with students helps us help them when they are in youth sports.
The culture around youth sports has changed so much, with so many AAU and travel teams, with soccer being pay-to-play, needing to be able to afford it to play at the highest level. The culture of youth sports is insane; the AAU club a lot of my players play for have tournaments all around the state and have huge pressure to specialize. We just miss the point of youth sports, and our students are getting sucked into the high pressure.
In our last game against Toano, a kid turned the ball over, and an adult who wasn't his dad stands up and yells "What are you doing?!" and the kid starts breaking down on the court. I immediately went up to their coach after the game and told him "I hope you know, if you didn't notice, I wanted to let you know that your player was about to have a breakdown because of something one of your fans yelled at him."
I feel like we've lost the picture of what youth sports should look like. When you care about the relationship with athletes more than the X's and O's and the scoreboard, it helps us get back to the heart of what youth sports is supposed to be.
For further reading about the state of youth sports and keeping proper perspective, please consider these recommendations from Charley:
Execution
Charley has recorded some drills to build skill and mental focus for youth basketball and football players. These drills require little to no equipment, just the dedication to work towards greater skill and acuity.
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