Pat McMahon
Pat McMahon, Head Baseball Coach at Canterbury High School has won Positive Coaching Alliance’s coveted Double-Goal Coach Award presented by TeamSnap for his positive impact on youth athletes.
McMahon is one of 50 national recipients of the Double-Goal Coach award, named for coaches who strive to win while also pursuing the more important goal of teaching life lessons through sports. The award includes a $200 prize, a certificate, and mention within the websites and newsletters of Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA), a national non-profit developing Better Athletes, Better People through youth and high school sports. All 50 winners are provided two tickets to PCA’s National Youth Sports Awards Dinner and Benefit Sponsored by Deloitte to be held at Maples Pavilion on Stanford University’s Campus April 28th, 2018 to receive recognition of their award.
“Coach McMahon helps athletes win on and off the field,” said Jim Thompson, PCA Founder and CEO and author of nine books on youth sports, including The Power of Double-Goal Coaching. “By creating a positive, character-building youth sports experience and serving as a Double-Goal Coach, Pat helps youth develop into better athletes and better people.”
After nearly 28 successful years of coaching at Canterbury, McMahon certainly is doing something right. Athletic Director, Ken Harkenrider shared that “He is relentlessly positive in every aspect of his interactions with players and creates an atmosphere where all support each other and work hard together to overcome their adversities”. He continued saying, “He often says that baseball is a game of repeated failures and that the most important element of getting players to be successful is to teach how to move past those failures and keep plugging on”. This formula of caring for players and allowing mistakes as part of the learning process has resulted in great success year after year.
McMahon and his family own a successful tire business and he will often go so far as to employ student-athletes who are struggling to help them learn responsibility, discipline and respect. He acts as a counselor helping the young student-athlete through the struggle and relating things back to baseball and his passion for the game, all the while, strengthening the bond to his team. McMahon is not just creating athletes, but young men of integrity, character and accomplishment.
Because Canterbury is a college preparatory school, McMahon keeps academics at the forefront of his approach. “I really stress academics. If kids have a test or a paper, that’s an excused absence. I let them miss practice and the team accepts it that academics are first The kids know I’m with them, not against them and they really respect that and how I treat them”, he said. He even adds a special touch on senior day by having special t-shirts made for the seniors with the name of the college they will attend on the front- keeping academics as a focal point and end result of the hard work put in over the last four years.