Over the four years I played football at St. Johns, I had many coaches. All of them were great, but there was one, however, that stood out among all the rest. He helped me through my first year and guided me through the other three. He always encouraged and motivated me every practice and game along with doing the same with all the players on the team. This man is coach Bill Kurlin.


My first year playing football in 5th grade was a new experience, though I had wanted to play for a while, I was horrifyingly nervous and had no clue what I was doing. I also was not well conditioned and didn’t do well with the running. Now, all the coaches tried to help me but It feels like only Coach Kurlin really made a difference. He tried to see my situation from my point of view and came up with suggestions as to why I felt the way I did. After that, I shook those feelings and did my best and started on the B team (It was my first year so I had to be on that team). In 6th grade, he was always looking out for me and always trying to make me better; but due to his intervention last year, I didn’t need his help as much; he took this as a good thing. Even off the football field, I was pretty much a big baby up until this time. Listening to Coach Kurlin, in a sense, toughened me out and I stopped with that mentality.


Along with helping and encouraging me, I always saw him doing the same with other players when needed. He would have no problem with going out of his way to help one of us. This is proven by the fact that he is a firefighter. He always helped us and did what was best for us. Same thing in society. His job is to save people in danger. I always admired that. Starting at this time, he was always calling me up to do a drill first or show the group an example because he knew I was able to do it well. This was a huge confidence booster I never even realized. In my 7th grade year, for some reason I still don’t know, he didn’t show up to the practices or games until about halfway through the season. It Didn’t bother me too much, I had a team to play for, but when he finally showed up, I felt like I was doing better the rest of the season.


My 8th grade year was probably the most influential. By now, Coach Kurlin had molded me from the kid crying on the sidelines to a team Captain. Yes, captain. In all honesty, I am unsure how I got that position, though I was far from a bad player. I now think that when deciding on captains, Coach Kurlin put in a really good word for me about where I came from and how I “evolved” to what I was at the time. Makes sense. With being a captain he was on me more about setting examples and being a leader. Unlike my fellow captains who led verbally by yelling motivational phrases and going crazy at times, I led by examples, and I was relatively quiet, until the championship. We got to the championship in 8th grade. Although we lost, I never felt more motivated and proud of myself than that time because of Coach Kurlin. He was the loudest I’ve ever heard. Yelling things about how hard we had worked to get here and that there was no reason we should lose. Now, I have discrepancies with the referees of that game as to why we lost but I’ll keep them to myself. In order to get there though, we had to work hard with the end in mind. It wasn’t just me he motivated to get that far; it had to be all of us, the whole team.


Although a very loud and sometimes frightening man, Bill Kurlin was a great coach who knew all of the players on a personal level and knew all there was to football. He helped me through my first year and showed me the ropes and went as far as to elect me as a captain four years later. Taking his mentality of helping people as a firefighter to helping us on the field was something he did best. I wish he was still my coach in high school(though one St .John’s coach I had is one of my High School coaches). He is a very motivating and encouraging person who does all he can to make sure you know what you’re doing and that you do your best. Something all people should live by.