Sweat and smiles, all to the tune of the bouncing basketball.

Practice time is fun time. It’s working time. It’s learning time.

It’s also safe time, where there is no winner or loser, just hopeful progress. It’s where young players who haven’t played much ball begin to learn and fall in love with it.

Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.

As the January flurries flittered across the rural landscape, we were greeted by a steady wind as we eyed a nearby high school.

There, a sixth-grade girls basketball team, coached by me, would see where it stacked up against uniforms of a different color. My girls haven’t played much ball — one of the many sacrifices of the coronavirus pandemic was a lost fifth-grade season — and we were equally excited and nervous to see how it would go.

In the 15 minutes between our two games that day, the sweat was there, but the smiles were fewer and further between. We got beat. We fought, but a team that had been playing much longer than us got the better of us.

It was a first for us, for me, for our parents.

Just like practice time, huddle time is also learning time.

I told a joke, loosened the girls, and let them know I was proud of their effort and that better things would happen to us.

I had no clue where we stacked up, but decided to buy into my own words.

The second game was a beautiful outing — we played better and came out on top.

I was heartened to see the girls happily laughing after the game — their first victory representing their school.

Sweat and smiles.

Like all sports stories, this one continues with up and downs. Frustrations and triumphs. Problem-solving. More focused work in practice.

Two steps forward, one step back.

That is why I so much love sports and activities. It is great training for life. There is sweat and smiles, and there are tears. Sometimes, it doesn’t seem fair, like the hard work isn’t paying off. Then, out of nowhere, a breakthrough.

The most common misnomer is that success is a straight line, like one of those charts with an arrow going both up and out at the same rate as it travels from the bottom left to the top right corner.

Life is non-linear and is not a storybook. Hard work gets you in a better position, but it doesn’t guarantee success.

Giving kids an outlet to simulate that, to learn a new skill, to get some exercise and have fun with their friends is what motivates me to coach. That, plus it is extreme quality time with my daughters and their friends.

This winter, this busy guy made it a priority to coach both Isabelle’s sixth-grade school team and Juliet’s low-pressure YMCA team.

There are coaches who are smarter, are more prepared, and who were better basketball players than me.

But I am passionate about the pursuit of progress and about building lightbulb moments that inspire confidence. Confidence in a young person is a beautiful sight to behold.

Anybody who volunteers in any capacity knows it’s about the sweat and smiles.

Thank you to all who give their time to others.

Jeremy Speer is the publisher of The Courier in Findlay, Ohio, The Advertiser-Tribune in Tiffin, Ohio, and Review Times in Fostoria, Ohio. He can be reached at jeremyspeer@thecourier.com or jspeer@advertiser-tribune.com.