There are many job and volunteer possibilities for students, and for those who are interested in sports, there are many different coaching opportunities. Many students earn money by coaching kids in sports such as baseball, soccer, and basketball.
Junior Chloe Cabrera coaches baseball for the Milpitas Little League as a volunteer for her younger brother’s team, she said.
“I decided to do this because my dad is a head coach and my brother is on the team,” Cabrera said. “And the whole program is run by my uncle, so it’s pretty family-oriented. And I love coaching little kids. I think it’s really fun, and I’ve been doing it for a long time too.”
Coaching her little brother and watching him grow as a baseball player is Cabrera’s highlight of volunteering in this program, she said.
“My favorite memory is coaching my brother and seeing him improve because he struggles a lot when he doesn’t do well, so I like being able to talk to him and see him actually make improvements and become stronger,” Cabrera said. “Last game, I had to sit down and talk to him because he was really upset, and I was actually able to get to him and have him listen to me, and that was very memorable.”
Junior Genevieve Nguyen coaches soccer at both Kidz Love Soccer and Police Activities League (PAL) Soccer for younger kids ranging from 2 to 10 years old, she said.
“When I clock in, we set up the field with four flags and two goals, and then balls,” Nguyen said. “Each class is either 30 minutes or 45, and there’s usually five classes, and that first class is always with their parents. And then the last class is always the older kids, so kids around 10 years old.”
Nguyen works both weekends and weekdays at these programs and enjoys her time coaching, she said.
“The Kidz Love Soccer job is paid, and my PAL soccer is volunteer,” Nguyen said. “For my paid job, I get paid $21 an hour and work around three to four hours on weekdays, and eight hours on the weekends. My paycheck comes every two weeks, and usually I get around $200 to $500.”
The younger kids do not understand as much as the older kids, so each group does different drills, Nguyen said.
“As for coaching kids, the little ones are kind of too little, so they don’t really understand sometimes, and we have to help them out even more,” Nguyen said. “ But for the older kids, they understand better. For the younger kids, we just do little fun minigames, so not really any hard drills, but with our older kids, we do skills and scrimmages.”
Senior Lemayian Keen coaches basketball for Hoopsphere Basketball for kids and teenagers 4 to 17 years old, he said.
“In my class, I will start them off with a dynamic warm-up for 10 minutes, then talk to them about the topic we practice,” Keen said. “Then we go through the drills for 40 minutes, and for the last 10 minutes we scrimmage with the older kids or play basketball-related games with the younger kids.”
Keen enjoys acting as a leader and role model for the younger athletes, he said.
“I decided to do this job because I have a lot of experience in basketball and I really enjoyed coaching my high school fundraising camp,” Keen said. “My favorite part about being a coach is watching kids get better and build confidence in themselves.”
Cabrera believes coaching children is very rewarding and exciting because she can teach younger kids how to overcome struggles on the field, she said.
“My favorite part about coaching is being able to teach the kids how to deal with failure and how to persevere, just because that’s something that I’ve had to teach myself,” Cabrera said. “And so for baseball, it’s a really hard sport, and you fail 70% of the time and succeed 30% of the time. So it’s teaching the kids to be able to accept that and how you’re not going to get a hit every single time. Making them stronger mentally and just bettering players is so rewarding.”