Soldiers To Sidelines is proud to honor retired U.S. Navy veteran Curt Kline as the Soldier Coach of the Month for June 2023. Coach Kline earns this award for his intentional approach to his coaching practice and the courage to take action to achieve it. Curt excelled in our coaching certification seminars, enrolled and performed in our Membership Development Program with humility and an open mind, and eventually earned a coaching internship at the collegiate level to pursue his dream. Coach Kline was gracious to share his inspiration to coach and the journey of his pursuits.
STS: Tell your story about how and why you go into coaching. Discuss how coaching has impacted you as a person.
Coach Kline: As a boy, I played football because it helped overcome so many challenges I was going through. Aside from the immense pressure of learning how to become an adult without a father present, my family was poor, abusive, and we moved a lot. My coaches were like father figures to me and that’s how I knew I wanted to someday give back the way my football coaches did. The Navy helped me develop leadership experience, patience, and candor. When I retired, I really struggled to find purpose and figured coaching wasn’t a realistic endeavor. After hiking over 1,000 miles on the Appalachian Trail I concluded outcome is more important than income, so I left the trail and just went for it. A few interviews later I started coaching at Alexandria City High School, formerly TC Williams. One of the coaches there told me about Soldiers to Sidelines and in a very short time, here we are. I consider myself extremely blessed. STS is an amazing organization that I believe will help many others find a way to their coaching path more efficiently than I did.
STS: How has your military experience influenced you as a coach?
Coach Kline: Military service is so important because nobody starts as a leader regardless of branch, you must first learn to follow and follow well. I believe the best leadership is servant leadership, and to be a good servant leader, again, you must know how to follow. The military has this ‘perfect recipe’ for building great servant leaders and that’s an advantage I think is hard to replicate.
STS: Describe a coaching interaction with a player, or group of players, that has a special place in your heart?
Coach Kline: When former players or colleagues reach out for advice or opinion, it makes me feel like I did something right and that’s very special to me.
STS: What are your aspirations in coaching?
Coach Kline: Like many others, my ultimate goal is to add three letters to my resume that will forever be a positive example to others that your dreams and your purpose can be the same. For some, those letters are PhD or MBA which are very worthy! The letters I’m chasing are N, F, and L. My goal is to never reply to someone who asks for advice on how to follow their dreams by saying “I don’t know”.
STS: What was the most difficult challenge you have experienced in coaching and what have you learned from that experience?
Coach Kline: The most difficult challenge I experienced was thinking that I couldn’t do coaching as a profession. Overcoming that feeling is very satisfying. “If you think you can or cannot, you’re right.”
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