Coach Capers, one of the coaches on the Sunlake High School boys basketball team, has been the coach for about twenty years and doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon. Becoming a coach was a way for Mr. Capers to give back while also doing something he enjoys. It has also become an outlet for him, and he feels that basketball shows these boys how to become great young men and build character as well as grow emotionally and physically. Growing up, Mr. Capers played basketball and his role model was his high school basketball coach. The impact his coach had on his life helped Mr. Capers decide his career path, but also taught him that to coach a sport, you must love the sport and helping students.
Playing basketball along with playing any other sport teaches how to work well with others and make sacrifices. The communication on the team has improved tremendously in these past years, but sometimes it can still be irritating to work with a big team. What Coach explains is that in order to see change, they must feel pain, whether it is exercise or something else, players must understand what they need to do. As the season goes on, they begin to understand what they need to do. When the boys win a game, Coach Capers feels it depends on how the win was, because he explains there can be good wins when they play the game right, listening and playing hard, and they have fun. The bad wins are where you win the game, but it felt like a loss, and they didn’t do their best but still ended up pulling the win. The best win of the season for the team was their game against Carrollwood Day School and it was their first true test. The guys played hard the entire time and that’s where they could say that it was one of their good wins.
