Timothy Fife (top right) featured playing baseball, a passion that is shaping his future as he pursues a career in coaching. As Special Edition Editor Nina Fife’s older brother, Timothy Fife wrote about his own experience finding revival through recovery.
Growing up, my parents put my siblings and I into sports or different youth leadership programs. Whether it was swim lessons in the summer, soccer in the fall or baseball in the spring, we found some way to stay active no matter what the weather was like. The youth leadership programs ran year round and really focused on who we wanted to be and how to achieve those goals — this is where I found out baseball was what I wanted to do growing up.
These programs helped me set goals, both long term and short term, that were difficult but achievable. Taking those goals into baseball brought them within reach and accomplishing them became a fun challenge. I played baseball without injury until high school, where I had shoulder and elbow injuries within 18 months of each other. Although the injuries were not fun, they did not diminish my goals or where I wanted to go in the sport.
I worked my tail off to recover and get back onto the field and was able to enjoy a solid three years in college playing healthy before my elbow popped one more time. The second elbow pop really hurt, as I was 22 looking at another injured elbow and not finding any success toward my goal of playing professionally.
While trying to find a way to recover and get back on the field, a former teammate of mine reached out about coaching high school baseball. At first, I was unsure, as I still really wanted to play myself. But as I sat there hurt, I realized that my playing days were numbered and it was time to pass my knowledge onto the next generation of players. I texted my friend back, told him I was interested and started on the paperwork to become an official coach at the high school.
I had my ups and downs with coaches growing up — whether it was a minor misunderstanding because I thought I knew best or it was a bigger issue that I could not bite my tongue over. Either way, I did not want to be the type of coach who shut down their kids, and I made sure that I was going to hear every player out.
At first, I realized you can’t hear everyone’s problems out, but then I quickly noticed that not all problems were looking for solutions — some just needed to be heard.
I am now going into my third year coaching high schoolers and I could not be happier with the decision I made to join the coaching staff. Mentally, it took some humility and maturity, as I had to remind myself that these weren’t college baseball players and they could not execute to the level that we did.
Sometimes as coaches, we take a deep breath and walk away. Most of the time, coaches want to yell and tell their players what they’re doing wrong, but a lot of these guys have heard it 1,000 times before and they need the chance to mess up, pick themselves back up and do it the correct way. I mean, everyone falls, but if you don’t learn how to get back up, life will eat you alive.
This story was copy edited by Lila Rendel.
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