Your Words Matter

Rocco’s first soccer kinder soccer practice. I wasn’t just showing up as his coach—I was learning how to show up as his dad. With patience. With belief. With no strings attached.

“You Can’t Throw It That Far." Those were the words my father said one day at the local park, as I kept asking him to move farther back while tossing a football. Seemingly benign, but to a young child desperate to be seen and believed in, it said everything. It told me I can’t. It stymied imagination and invalidated ambition in its most innocent form.

It was probably only twenty yards in reality, but in my six-ish-year-old mind, it might as well have been the length of a football field. I was picturing Ron Jaworski dropping back and launching a perfect bomb to Harold Carmichael, leading my beloved Eagles to a glorious win over the Cowboys.

I don’t think he meant anything by it. Maybe he thought he was protecting me from disappointment, or maybe it was just a reflex, an offhand comment without much thought. But to me, it landed hard. It was the first time I remember someone putting a ceiling on what I believed I could do. And not just anyone, my dad.

That moment has stuck with me for over four decades. I’ve told the story dozens of times, to players, to parents, to other coaches, and it’s been a recurring theme with my therapist. Not because it was some grand, traumatic event. But because it perfectly captured how powerful our words can be, especially when they come from someone a child looks up to.

It’s so easy to underestimate what our kids are reaching for. At that moment, I wasn’t asking my dad to believe in my arm strength, I was asking him to believe in me. To move back, to let me try, to let me fail if that’s what was going to happen. Instead, I was told, you can’t.

Sometimes, when I reflect on that moment, I wonder if it was the very thing that set me on my professional path. What it codified for me is this: the things we say, especially to children, can take root and become beliefs. Kids are wired to dream, but they haven’t yet developed the reasoning to filter or contextualize the messages they receive.

Being so young, I didn’t grasp the significance of that moment. I probably didn’t even realize it had impacted me at all; and I certainly didn’t carry it consciously into adulthood. But when I started coaching, something about it came rushing back. That quiet comment from so many years earlier suddenly had context. I began to see it for what it really was.

That realization planted a seed. I didn’t know it then, but it would take root and grow quietly over the next several years—through different jobs, new experiences, and my evolving identity as a coach.

My first coaching role was as an assistant with our youth and middle school wrestling program, incidentally, a program my father helped start. And something clicked. I found myself encouraging kids to step into the uncomfortable moments where effort mattered more than skill, and where failure wasn’t something to fear, but just part of getting better. Whether it was walking a nervous kid out onto the mat for their very first match, or sitting beside one after a tough loss, I saw how much belief, real, honest belief, could steady a young person. I saw how it could soften failure, build confidence, and help them hold their heads a little higher the next time out.

It didn’t take long before I started to recognize something in many of the kids I was coaching, something eerily  familiar. I saw the fear behind the forced toughness, the quiet shame behind the slumped shoulders after a mistake. I saw kids who, like me, were carrying the emotional weight of fathers who equated worth with performance, on the mat, on the field, in the classroom. Fathers who likely meant well but never learned how to separate love from expectation.

What I began to understand was this: when a child believes their value is conditional, contingent on winning, on achievement, on getting it right, they learn to armor up. They learn to perform for approval instead of showing up to grow. And in those early years of coaching, something shifted in me. I found empathy. I found purpose. I realized that I could be someone different for them, someone who believed in them as people first, wrestlers second.

That realization would go on to shape who I am today. It helped me begin the long process of unlearning what I’d internalized, and replacing it with something far more powerful: belief, patience, and unconditional support.

Over the next several decades, I evolved as a coach. I practiced. I failed. I learned what works, and what doesn’t, when it comes to helping young people tap into the power of belief. I studied the moments that built trust and noticed the ones that broke it. I paid attention to body language, to tone, to timing. I learned that belief isn’t just something you say, it’s something you show, again and again, especially when a child is struggling.

I came to understand that you don’t need to be perfect to make an impact, you just need to be present, honest, and consistent. I watched kids light up when they felt seen for who they were, not just what they could do. And I started to realize that all of this work, all of this trial and error, was preparing me for something even more personal: to be a different kind of parent.

By the time I became a father, I had spent years unlearning old patterns and building new ones. I had already seen what happens when kids are believed in, when they’re given space to grow instead of demands to prove. And I was certain that I didn’t want my love for my sons to ever feel tied to their performance. I wanted them to know, without question, that they were enough.

And so, when it was my turn, when I stood in the park with my own sons, I knew what to say. Because what I needed at six years old wasn’t someone to manage my expectations. I needed someone to believe in me. To step back and say, go for it.

That simple moment, you can’t throw it that far, has echoed in my mind for over forty years. But not as a wound. Not anymore. Today, it serves as a reminder of how powerful our words can be. How belief, spoken aloud, can help shape a child’s identity. And how healing often begins when we choose to show up differently than those who came before us.