🙏 That one school sports teacher who genuinely changed how you see sports

Ran into my own old school sports teacher completely by accident at a local market last week, someone I genuinely had not seen in probably close to fifteen years now, and the whole encounter brought back a genuine flood of specific memories about how much that one particular teacher actually shaped my own overall relationship with sports and physical activity more broadly during those genuinely formative school years. I was honestly never a naturally gifted athlete myself as a kid, consistently picked last during most team selections, but this particular teacher specifically made real, genuine effort to actually find something I personally could genuinely improve at and feel a real sense of pride about, rather than simply writing me off entirely the way a couple of other, less patient teachers before him honestly seemed to at the time. That specific early experience genuinely shaped how I think about physical activity even now as an adult, less about actually being naturally gifted or winning consistently, and more about the genuine, real satisfaction of actually improving steadily at something over time regardless of your own particular starting point or natural talent level. Told him directly during that brief chance encounter how much his own specific approach back then genuinely mattered to me personally, and he seemed genuinely moved, mentioning he honestly does not always get to actually hear that kind of direct, specific feedback from former students many years later after they have actually left school and moved on with their own lives. This whole chance encounter made me think about how much a single specific teacher can genuinely shape a kid's entire relationship with an activity for literally decades afterward, well beyond whatever actual specific skill they might have originally taught during those particular classes themselves. Did anyone else have a specific sports teacher or coach who genuinely changed how you personally think about sports or physical activity more broadly, and have you ever actually gotten the chance to properly thank them directly for that yourself?

Had a games teacher who made every single one of us learn to referee our own matches before he would even let us play properly at all, said understanding the rules from that side changes how you argue about decisions later on in life. Took years before I properly understood why he insisted on that particular rule at all back then.