Our job as friends, mentors, parents, and writing coaches is not to write anyone's college essay. That's cheating. Plus, it sends a discouraging message to the teenager that he or she can't be trusted with this important assignment. Trust the student to write the essay, but verify that it gets done. Gentle editing and proofreading are allowed.

The things I was allowed to experience, the people I was able to call friends, teammates, mentors, coaches and opponents, the travel, all of it, are far more than anything I ever thought possible in my lifetime.

I'm just so thankful for the guys I get to be around, for the coaches, for my family.

Some of my best experiences have been at KU and I'm thankful for my teammates, coaches and all the people that support KU.

I am thankful for everyone at the club that helped me, the fans, the coaches that I have had, the staff that have helped with injuries, I am really grateful to everyone at Everton. It was like a family to me.

If you take golf, you have a teacher for the drive, a teacher for the approach play, and a teacher for the putt. That's three specialist coaches for one player. In football, one coach looks after 25 players.

I think sometimes when it comes to sports, and especially relationships between players and coaches, that people lose track, lose a sense of reality.

My dad was a sports writer when I was younger and then he became just a general columnist. But I grew up with him literally getting into brawls with football coaches.

We coaches have to learn how to deal with that: How do I get to each one best - with a talk, with video analysis? And what sort of tone? We need our own coaches for that. The sports psychologist coaches me too.

I respect Bielsa a lot. For me, he is a special coach. I think the best coaches in the world work in different things, and a lot of coaches, we cannot train like Bielsa. It's difficult to train like Bielsa. But every coach can learn from different coaches. But with Bielsa, I think all coaches learn something from him.

It's all about patience and I'm sure my time will come. I'm learning what it takes to be successful and I'm doing the things the coaches tell me.

You cannot compare Pep to any Brazilian coach. If you put all Brazilian coaches together, you would get Pep. One has motivational skills, another is tactically strong. But Pep has it all.

Choosing a system is no longer enough, coaches have to be psychologists and motivational leaders too.

The biggest difference is in the leadership. It was better for us. We had more coaches and mentors to help us. A lot of the younger players today suffer from a lack of direction.

When we can reach out as coaches and give back to these kids and touch them with the knowledge and with the thought process to give them the opportunity to do something that they dream about doing, that's what God put us here for.

The No. 1 job is to help a player reach their highest potential, and that's not possible without being able to relate with them. That's been helpful, and as far as my knowledge base is concerned, that stems from being around great coaches willing to share.

I'm getting used to this as a coach because it's a little jealousy from a lot of these coaches around the country. I do understand that, because we are NBA players trying to come back, and we didn't have any experience as college coaches. So we didn't, quote, unquote, 'Pay our dues.'

Some coaches are not educated at the elite level in health and nutrition. They're not educated in how the body works from anatomy and physiology perspectives.

I want to use my connections with coaches, players, celebrities, whomever, and if I can take that friendship and use it to help someone else, I'm going to take advantage of that. I'm not going to apologize for that.

Of course, on the road with me, I've got my coach, my own private physiotherapist. Back home, I have another coach who coaches me and also does all my racquets. I have a fitness trainer. I have a mental coach. It's a pretty big team.

Even when I was training alone, just me and one of United's fitness coaches, I loved going onto the field, doing sprints, being at the training ground.

I get in the gym and put the work in with the fitness coaches so I can be the best shape I can be in.

Unlike most youngsters who have school as their 'second home' where they meet and make friends, for me playtime has been at the Gopichand Badminton Academy in Hyderabad. When I am not playing a tournament, my days are spent at the Academy with my coaches, physiotherapists and colleagues, who are like family. We laugh and have so much fun.

Faith is the most important thing in the world to me. It's the greatest strength I've had. It's helped me get through the hard times. You're not going to win every one of your football games. I've always said I'm not going to make football my god. A lot of coaches put so much into coaching football games that they have nothing left.