Coach Dan's Chalk Talk About Tobacco

(Coach Dan has coached football, basketball, wrestling, and track and field.  Currently, Dr. Ziatz teaches future coaches in the School of Physical Education at West Virginia University.)

First of all, why would an athlete in any sport even consider smoking? Athletes need oxygen and the ability to breathe well. If you have shortness of breath, you have an athletic impairment.  Can you imagine running wind sprints after smoking?  Would you like to swim 50 yards after a cigarette?

There are some athletes and even ``super stars" who have smoked and continue to smoke.  Perhaps their skills were so good that smoking did not seem to affect their performance. However, smoking may have shortened their careers, and in the case of one football coach, Hugh McCabe, smoking took his life prematurely.  When Coach McCabe started smoking at the age of 13, many people did not know that smoking caused lung cancer and other diseases. Today most athletes your age know that smoking is bad for them; yet some begin to smoke.  Why do kids start smoking?  Let's make a list.

1. To seem cool
2. To be accepted
3. To follow peer pressure
4. To seem older
5. To experiment
6. To rebel
7. To respond to a dare
8. To get attention
9. To have something to do in social situations
10. To relieve tension
11. To control weight

These reasons are excuses for a bad choice.  You, as a student, athlete, have a great power. This power can make you or break you. This power is the power to choose.

Think about some of the short-term effects of smoking. These include bad breath, yellow teeth, hacking cough, smelly clothes and hair, red irritated eyes, lower stamina, early wrinkles, yellow fingers.

Then think of the cost.  Smoking is a waste of money.  You will save yourself money if you never start.

Let's talk briefly about the long-term effects of smoking. These include heart disease, lung cancer, mouth cancer, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, stroke and other circulation diseases, decreased lung capacity, cancer of the larynx (voice box).

Smoking affects the reproduction system. Smoking decreases and slows circulation of the blood to extremities of the body. The sex organs of a smoker (male or female) can malfunction. Without good circulation, many men become impotent, unable to have or keep an erection. Smoking can retard fetal growth in a pregnant woman.  It may cause her to have a spontaneous (surprise) abortion or her baby may die before it is delivered.

These are the facts of smoking.  Coach Hugh McCabe said, ``It's not the last pack of cigarettes that does you in; it's the first cigarette, because that's what leads to all the other packs. I thought it was going to be somebody else that was going to die as a result of smoking." Coach McCabe is dead.  This was his final lesson.

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