Geared Up Issue 1 2018 | Page 36

Community Continued from page 33 children are our future, and children are our future members, staff and managers,” he said. “If you think about it, it’s all about the kids. At the end of the day, as an adult, it’s about what you can do to pay it forward, with your team and continually do something nice for kids.” Fagan and his son after winning the New Jersey Suburban Youth Football League Super Bowl in 2014. From Player to Coach 34 Unlike Choquette, franchisee Kevin Fagan was involved in sports from a young age. Fagan notes that his coaches, whether from grade school or his time playing football for Harvard University, made a lasting impact on him, so when his son started playing flag football in the second grade, he jumped on the opportunity to become a mentor as well. “It’s one place where you can really make a difference by being a role model for kids that perhaps don’t have a role model at home or could use a better one,” said Fagan. “I remember all my football coaches. I can remember things they taught me about football and how that prepared me to approach challenges in my own life. Hopefully, I’m doing the same for our youth players.” Once Fagan’s son advanced to the fourth grade, he began to play tackle football, and Fagan moved through the ranks with him. He interviewed for the tackle football coaching position and, after five years on the job, was asked to oversee the Summit, New Jersey, program. Fagan now organizes the league’s programing on behalf of the city in addition to coaching. “The biggest thing I’ve gained has been a lot of perspective,” said Fagan. “I try not to play favorites and hold everyone to the same standards. It’s poisonous to our culture to allow the best employee or player to get away with being late while the kid or employee with the least perceived potential runs laps for the same error.” In addition to treating everyone equally, Fagan notes he has learned that most people respond better when they hear something nice before they receive constructive criticism. “I always try to find a compliment before correcting incorrect behavior,” he said. “That has worked on the field as well as in business.” When asked about a moment in time that stood out to him during his coaching career, Fagan recalls the time one of his players wrote an essay that won him a $500 scholarship. “Our league has an essay contest each year, and this year, one of my eighth-grade players submitted an essay. He is from Finland, and English is not his first language. His father sent it to me and told me that he wrote it in Finnish and then translated it to English. It took him hours to write it and even more to translate,” explained Fagan. “The themes of his essay were pride, discipline and tradition. As I read the essay, it really hit home that, even though this boy probably only understood half of what we said to him, we were really getting through. I’m happy to say that he won the scholarship.” Fagan notes that, like in life, sports are about learning the game and learning from the game. “There are a lot of charities out there that are about improving your social status or promoting your own or your children’s interests,” he said. “Volunteering your time to our youth might not get you into the ‘chairman’s circle,’ but it’s a tremendously rewarding investment in the future of our country.” Leading Through Learning Sports aren’t the only way franchisees can coach youth along their life’s journey. For franchisee Sam Glassman, the problems facing some of the inner-city youth of New York is a major motivating factor. Glassman volunteers with Two Together and the Teak Fellowship, as well as volunteers and sits on the board of trustees for SCAN New York. All three organizations are focused on helping at-risk youth stay out of trouble and reach their full potential. “Volunteering has made me more thoughtful about how I approach life, made me more thankful for how lucky I was in the way that my life was presented to myself. I was born into a family that valued education and religion and was relatively normal. A lot of people don’t get those opportunities, and it’s not their fault. They’re just not born at the right place at the right time,” said Glassman. “It made me think about what I was going to do with the opportunities that I had been given that others haven’t. It’s something that I’ve been blessed with, and I probably should do something with that to make my life more meaningful and richer in color.”