For many who played high school football, there's no greater influence in life than a high school coach.

Those teenage years are formative ones, when children start to mature into adulthood, and when lives and future paths begin to take shape.

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Each year, Positive Coaching Alliance honors 50 youth and high school coaches from across the nation, awarding its Double-Goal Coach® Award Presented by TeamSnap. The award winners embody PCA’s ideal of the Double-Goal Coach, who pursues winning and the more important goal of teaching life lessons through sports – an approach to coaching that USA Football also strives to spread throughout youth football up through high school.

Here's what some of the men who've been honored said about the importance of football in their lives, their players’ lives and throughout their communities:

Craig Barker, Kaufman High School (Texas)

“I always thought that being positive was the best way to get the most out of kids as athletes and as people and help them grow into becoming good employees and good parents.”

Marcelle Carruthers, Lansing Everett High School (Michigan)

“We can’t let an area code or a zip code dictate our futures. There’s always going to be a perception, people wanting to look at our community a certain way, and we don’t want to do anything to validate those beliefs. We say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ We look people in the eye. Things like that can take us far.”

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Dominick Ciao, Berkeley Preparatory School (Tampa, Florida)

“We need coaches who care about coaches, coaches who care about players, players who care about coaches, and players who care about players. Our philosophy here has always been that no win is more important than our players.”

Tony Dudik, Bishop LeBlond High School (St. Joseph, Missouri)

“You are involved with young men at a very critical and fragile stage in their lives. Football is a terrific vehicle to impart important life lessons. The scoreboard is there for a reason, but it’s not the most important thing.”

Michael Hobbie, San Marino High School (California)

“First and foremost, the relationships with your teammates will be the most cherished. Also, you learn a lot about yourself and how to face adversity. How we handle that determines how we move through life.”

Rick Jones, Greenwood High School (Arkansas)

“Coaching football is more than Xs and Os. I tell our kids that if all they’ve learned playing football at Greenwood High School is how to run an out route, they’ve wasted vast amounts of time and energy. We believe that football is a great opportunity to teach character, and it doesn’t happen by osmosis. Teaching character through football has to be intentional. If we’re not careful, we waste opportunities to have positive effects on young men’s lives.”

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Andy Lowry, Columbine High School (Littleton, Colorado)

“The No. 1 goal is the impact you make in young people’s lives. When you take care of the kids and you try to build young people, the winning takes care of itself. Winning is never the ultimate goal by any means. It’s a product of doing things right with the kids. If you win, and you’re not developing quality young people, then winning is worthless.”

Jim Moran, Dobbs Ferry High School (New York)

“Developing life goals is the big picture. The things we do day-to-day – work-habits-wise and making sure the kids are accountable and showing respect – are part of our regular practices. Hopefully that makes them stronger young men down the line. The thing that team sports help you focus on is that people are depending on you to do your job, and when you don’t, the team fails. That’s the way life is at work, and that’s the way family is.”

Jimmy "Red" Parker, Harmony Grove High School (Arkansas)

“To all the men who made up our football teams, it is my hope that you know how much I cared, and that I was always willing to risk losing your affection to see that you did the right thing. You need to know that I loved you enough to be a disciplinarian.’”

Chris Svarczkopf, Bishop Dwenger High School (Fort Wayne, Indiana)

“My philosophy of coaching, which follows my philosophy of life, is that we were put on this Earth for a purpose, and that’s to serve. It’s up to us to find out in what area, and then we’ll find joy. My joy is working with young people, especially in athletics. I take that out to the field, that I’m there to serve and to bring joy to their lives and add value to their lives.”

David Jacobson is the former senior marketing communications and content manager for Positive Coaching Alliance. For more information, visit www.positivecoach.org. For free resources, visit www.PCADevZone.org.

This is an updated version of a blog that originally published March 25, 2016.