I am brave.
Linda Martindale wasn’t brave, at least she didn’t think she was after she had been hired as a varsity boys basketball coach.
“Once the game started, I was fine,” says Martindale, now in her sixth season leading Lincoln-Sudbury (MA), “but walking into the gym and people thinking I'm the scorekeeper or whatever, I had to sort of overcome this feeling of, ‘Do I belong in the gym?’ ”
She made the three words her mantra, and she convinced herself she was brave. You need to be as an athlete, or a coach, in today’s world of youth sports.
“I have fond memories of my athletic career, but I also know there was a lot of heartache and it was very difficult,” says Martindale, who played Division II basketball at Alaska-Anchorage and in the old Pac-10 at Arizona in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “But nowadays, it's totally different. Your whole career is splashed all over social media.”
