Now that my final season of soccer has ended, I should thank you for two great years of soccer; however, I cannot do that.

The two years I “played” for you were utterly miserable. All confidence I had in myself was crushed as I sat the bench for not one, but two whole seasons, with the exception of a few games. When I did play, I was lucky to get even 20 minutes to prove my worth to you. I became ostracized by the lack of play time, because what good player wants to associate with a benchwarmer?

Apparently none.

Maybe you didn’t see a problem with it because you thought I was having fun with the team and enjoying the season. I wasn’t. I was the only senior not to be captain, which made the younger players disregard me. They only cared what the captains had to say, only wanted to joke around with the “good” players. Even the other seniors formed their own clique, which did not include me. Thus, I had few friends on the team, so my experience was not very enjoyable.

It would be different if I had been able to play the sport I loved, but I became merely a practice player. I am disposable in your mind, not essential to change the outcome of the game. When I asked you why I didn’t play, you never gave me a straight answer.

One time, you blamed it on the fact that I was wearing a jacket and you thought I was someone else. The next time I asked, you tried to blame it on my lack of confidence—after handing me a note card the previous week that complimented how much my confidence had improved. You repeatedly told me you were “making a conscious effort to get me in,” but the only times I was put in were after we were already winning by four goals.

I see now that you were the one who lacked confidence in me. You thought I was a good enough player to compete against our starting 11 in practice and push them to improve, but I was not strong enough to hold up against the rest of the conference.

So in your mind, I really was not wasting my time; my involvement did serve a purpose: to strengthen the team. Of course you didn’t think of me and the million other things I’d rather be doing than sitting on a cold metal bench waiting impatiently for the play time that hardly ever came. You didn’t care that the starting 11 barely talked to me and tried to make me feel significantly inferior to them. You only cared about yourself and your reputation as a coach, and you did what you had to do to keep our outstanding record.

If you had just given me a chance, though, I am certain I could have made a profound impact on our team’s style of play. Perhaps we could have made it further in the playoffs. I only received about five minutes at a time, though, which is not nearly enough to prove my skill to you. And if I made a mistake, no matter how small, you pulled me off the field for the rest of the game. However, if one of the starters made the same mistake a couple of minutes later, you said nothing.

You also blamed me countless times for other players’ mistakes, when I was the person who did the right thing in that instance. You didn’t trust me, even though you had complimented my knowledge of the game and intelligence of the game so many times.

I want you to know that your treatment of me as a player made me hate the game I once loved. Because of you, I no longer feel the same passion that I used to feel when I played soccer. There are ten other people who sat next to me on the bench, sharing my experience, and, although I have not talked to them about this, I am sure they feel a similar way.

I want you to see exactly how you crushed the spirits of these players, even if you might not mean to. Coaches are supposed to build their players up, encourage them, and help them improve, not cut them down and make them feel worthless. The point of being on the team is to play the game, and when you deprive them of that, you take away the reason they love the sport.

Please take this into consideration as you coach future teams, and don’t let anyone play for less than 15 minutes each game. You put them on the team for a reason; if you can’t even trust them enough to play in the game, you should not have put them on the team to begin with. And if you can’t come up with a good enough reason not to play them, maybe you should put them on the field. Give them a real chance to show you what they can do.