A Visit with Joe Ehrmann

    But here on North Mooreland Road, we like to think we’re enlightened.  
    When it comes to educating young people and ministering to each other, we get it.
    In fact, alumni tell us over and over that the most important attributes of their alma mater are the sense of community they felt and the enduring relationships they developed.

    Ehrmann, who’s 62, lives in Baltimore, and serves as defensive coordinator for the football team at Gilman School, spoke this past Wednesday night to a large gathering of students and their parents.  Thursday, he addressed the entire faculty, then joined the coaching staff for lunch.
    Just before he left, he and I talked about his calling, his motivation, and his take on sports today.
    If I ever questioned what we would learn (or have reaffirmed), the answer is now quite clear.

    What’s the message we should take from you?

    All of us – teachers, coaches, and administrators – need to respect the power, the platform, the position we have in the lives of young people and use that platform to change the arc of their lives.  

    You've played many roles in many areas of society.  What do you consider your occupation?

    When I was young, I had a tragedy in my life (the death of his younger brother Billy in 1978 to aplastic anemia) and read Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning.  Frankl said the greatest of all human freedoms is the ability to choose how you respond to any given situation.  I’ve taken my own life circumstances and tried to add value to that and to other people.
    So I identify myself as a wounded healer.  I’ve healed my own wounds and used those wounds to heal other people.

    What inspired you to become a coach?

    I was doing inner city work, housing, economic development, a host of issues and also coaching a Pop Warner football team.
    One day it hit me that the greatest impact I was having was coaching these young boys.  I came to the conclusion that there’s probably no better venue to bring about a fair and just society and help boys become men and girls become women than through sports.  

    When did your motivational speaking begin?

    When my brother died, I was on this quest to understand life's issues.  I ended up in seminary so I’ve been preaching for a long time.  
    I decided I’d have a greater impact if I took my pulpit and put it out there in the community. I’ve developed my messages as I’ve built my narrative and tried to figure out how to bring about transformation in society.

    Your philosophy of coaching is really a philosophy of developing life skills.

    If I was the word czar of America, I would change the word “coach” to “mentor.”  Coaching is really about mentoring, guiding, nurturing.  It has to do with helping kids make sense of their own lives.

    You talk about the coach’s job is to love his players and the player’s job is to love his teammates.  Does every kid buy into this?

    The vast majority, but it’s not a question of whether they buy it.  It’s when it hits.  I’ve done enough city work.  I’ve had kids in prison that write me 15, 20 years later, “Reverend Joe, now I see what you were talking about.”
    My job is to plant the seeds.  Sometimes you see immediate growth and maturation.  Others take a long time. I don’t think any seed goes wasted.

    Do you mentor the way you were mentored?

    I had an awful lot of coaches who used my own personal pain for their benefit.  I graphed every coach I ever played for and identified those who were transformational in my life.  I tried to discern what they did, what developmental need they met, and how they interfaced with me.  
    I played 13 years professional football (8 with the Baltimore Colts, 2 with the Detroit Lions, 3 in the United States Football League), but it was Roy Simmons Jr., my lacrosse coach at Syracuse.
    Six national championships.  Unbelievably successful.  He was a sculptor.  He used to take us to art museums.  Lacrosse is a Native American game.  He taught us Native American history, the injustices, the racism.  He was about the aesthetics and beauty of the sport.  
    He was so transformational versus the vast majority, so when I started to coach, I used him as the model to get out of the traditional coaching bonds and create my own philosophy and purpose.

    What lessons do you sense that Collegiate’s students learned from you?    
    
    All I did was add some verbiage and a little structure to what they had already been getting.  The students were incredibly receptive to a mature message that I brought.  That’s the result of the way they’ve been parented and what this school has done.
    
    What do you want to leave with our faculty, coaching staff, and administration?

    Every person who has power and influence over young people should have some transformational purpose that they can verbalize and write.  
    Having a purpose dictates how you interact with young people. Too many of us just re-enact the way we were coached and taught.  
    This is a different generation.  
    If every teacher left today with a clear purpose statement, a sense of their values and virtues, and a definition of success, this would have been an incredibly successful trip.

    How do you view professional sports today?

    Sports should be an educational activity.  Right now (professional sports) is a business transaction.  It’s quid pro quo.
    But I’ll say this. I’m in and out of NFL locker rooms all the time.  I’ve never left a team where I haven’t been filled with optimism and hope.  
    The biggest difference is that when I played, the media would never report when players were doing things.  Today, sports writers are like paparazzi.  They can’t wait to find somebody doing something wrong. Then, a whole team gets tainted.
    Players still play for the love of the game no matter what the money is.  
    
    Your thoughts about big-time college football?

    This country needs a wake-up call.   We need to rethink the purpose of sports.
    The win-at-all-cost culture doesn’t develop values or character.  It doesn’t serve society or the players well.  
    College sports has to be part of the educational system.  Too many programs have been taken over by adults to meet the needs of adults at the expense of kids.
    You’re not going to fix those problems just in college.  Those things start bubbling up in the little leagues.  Everybody involved in the sports nexus needs to rethink what we’re doing.

    Do you have an answer?

    Sports is a means to an end. The end has to do with moral-ethical training and the development of young people.  It has to be about creating citizens that can fight social injustice, have moral courage, strive for excellence.  
    Children need age-appropriate messages about the value of sports. Adults have to nurture and train young people in that healthy development.

    Is the purity in sports gone forever?

    I don’t know whether there ever was purity.  The human stain will always be there.
    We have to hold coaches and academic institutions more accountable. 
    Parents have to be educated about why they have their children playing.  They make all these sacrifices, but most parents have been caught in a riptide and taken out to sea with some false values.  They need a line to bring them back to shore and start thinking about why they have their child playing sports and what they want out of it.
    Everyone, from a multi-systemic perspective, needs to stop, rethink, and hold each other accountable.

    Will it ever be done?

    I think it will, but it will be school by school, community by community. 
    When a school or league really starts bringing value and purpose to sports, that’s a contagious idea.  
    The goal is to create a tipping point in America where the moral, ethical, social, civic well-being of players is no longer considered outside the realm of responsibility of sports or coaches.

    Do the kids at Gilman look at you as Joe Ehrmann, the pro football player, or Joe Ehrmann, their coach?

    They’re just listening to a man they know cares about them.
    It’s the power of connection, of attachment.
    Gosh, I played 100 years ago to these kids.  I’m an old man.  The point is, I look them in the eye, affirm their values, their worth, their human dignity.  They sense the authenticity. That creates receptivity.
    You don’t need credentials to do this.
    Kids are dying for someone to believe in them.
                                                             -- Weldon Bradshaw