On Sept. 17, 2013, the Las Positas College men’s soccer team played against Shasta College in their sixth game of the season. The team’s head coach Lawrence “Larry” Aguiar or coach “yeah baby”, as some have come to know him, has been coaching at LPC since 1984 but his coaching career has spanned 40 years. Prior to coaching at LPC, Aguiar coached women’s basketball for two years at Chabot College in 1980 as a favor to the athletic director. Aguiar is also a club advisor for the Taekwondo club on campus. Prior to game time, Aguiar answered a few questions for the Express.
What does coaching mean to you?
That’s a profound question. Coaching is like being a parent. Every second counts, everything you say is heard and taken for serious tone. You affect a lot of young men and women’s lives. You are a role model for them so you have to be on your best foot every second. There is no excuse for making a big mistake when people are looking up to you, it will come back to haunt you. Coaching is an every day thing and for me it’s pretty normal. Coaching is basically teaching, you are instructing people on how to do things.
For me it’s a passion, because when you love a sport, you want to get better at it. I’ve been lucky to do that for 40 years.
What is one thing you want to instill in your players?
There’s not just one thing, there are a lot of different ingredients but an important thing is being a productive member of society and everything that goes with that. Good behavior, ethical behavior, not stealing, not fighting, that is what coaches employ in their organized structure of a game. The game goes on but what about all of the stuff behind the scenes, the people on the bench and the people watching? It’s not just one thing. It’s a lot of different things.
Are you excited for game day?
I’m excited because the kids are excited. I’ve done my work, I’ve prepared them, when it comes to game time we are prepared and it’s on them to play the game. I can make a few suggestions but game day is where I sit back and see how well we’re doing as a team and how well we’re doing as a coaching staff. To me, game day is very exciting after the game is over, then I can analyze how we did, what we did right and what we didn’t do right. But game day is a day for the kids. It’s their day. They work hard and they get to go out and do their best. That is why I look forward to every game, not one game is more important than another.
I get to see how they do and that’s the fun part.
What legacy (if any) would you like to leave here at LPC?
I don’t look to leave any legacy. A man is worth what he’s worth and when you start talking about how one man’s contribution to society is better than another man’s, I don’t go for that. Every man and every woman’s contribution is what it is. It is their heart and their passion. The legacy is inside the person that affects everybody.
It’s the people that I’ve touched throughout the years, that is my legacy, not a building, not a plaque. It’s the people that remember ‘yeah baby’ years down the line.