The university’s head football coach on helping players grow in all dimensions of their lives
Coaching football “is an opportunity to help a young man become a person of character and accountability and compassion,” said Jay Civetti, Tufts’ head football coach. Photo: Michael Last
My mom was a high school field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse coach for 25 years. It was normal for me to get out of school and then get dropped off where she worked and to be around athletes on the practice field, in a competitive environment. My dad coached me in Little League, too. Sports just fit into who I was and what I wanted to do. It was in the blood. It was our love language, so to speak.
The summer after I graduated college, I went to Wellesley High where my younger brother, Teddy, had a captains’ practice for football. I was there for all of 10 minutes when I began coaching the players, showing them what they needed to do. It felt natural, like I had been doing it my whole life. I think it was then that I realized how much time, as a player, I had spent around my own coaches. I just really liked hanging out with them and just being around football.
I coach because I love the opportunity to help people discover who they are, and challenge people to find a level of their best self. Football is a great vehicle to help me do that—to help them grow in all phases of their life: the physical, emotional, and social ways. It’s an opportunity to help a young man become a person of character and accountability and compassion.
In my first job as the head freshman football coach at Milton High School, I got to help young kids who had never been put in a situation like this before with these high standards. This is where I really fell in love with the game. To put them in these situations and then see them have success, I was just, like ‘Yeah, this is what I want to do.’
I did not see this path of me becoming a football coach. Looking back, it makes sense to me now that I am a little bit older. Truth is, I just couldn’t live without ball.
At the end of the day, I hope someone can look back and say, ‘Coach Civetti was there for me, and he made me better.’ Because for me, the guys that have played for me have all made me better. And they have all showed up and been there for me.
—Jay Civetti, Tufts head football coach
Our Tufts is a series of personal stories shared by members of the Tufts community and featured on both Tufts Now and Instagram.
