It's soccer season for Lil' S2, and I'm the coach of the team. Technically, I'm one of two coaches, but I think I've just assumed the role of de facto head coach. What happened is, I signed Lil' S2 up to play, but couldn't get any of his friends to play with him (or, rather, couldn't get any of his friends' parents to add yet another commitment to their schedules), so he just got assigned to a random team. I figured they might already have a coach in place, and I hate the coordinating aspect of coaching, so I didn't sign up for the job. But then we got an email telling us our team had no coach, and we would have to fold if no parent volunteered.
So, I said I'd do it, as did another dad, and then there was a bunch of confusion because the league commissioner was traveling for work and not giving us any follow-up information or responding to emails. And then we got like 20 emails earlier this week, in preparation for the first game of the season, that I had to sort through for relevant information to relay to the parents. That's like my nightmare right there. I so hate making plans and coordinating things. It causes me too much anxiety, and I always feel like I'm going to mess it up. I'm OCD about it, and I check things over and over, even though I just checked them. It takes me, like, an hour to do something simple, like choose a plane ticket, because I'm nervous to actually commit (whereas S can book an entire vacation in ten minutes), and that's when I'm the only one affected by it. If I'm responsible for, say, picking the best practice field and time and day for everybody, it's instant anxiety.
It's totally irrational, of course. It's rec soccer. The parents don't really care. They're just happy somebody else is doing it so that they don't have to care. I spent way too long crafting an email,* making sure I got every detail correct, and the whole time I'm thinking to myself Why am you being so meticulous? Nobody will even read it carefully, if at all. Think about how little attention you give notices from school. And that's education. This is little kids running around on field for 40 minutes. And then it rained and the schedule got changed three times, anyway.
*There's a chat feature on the app we use for the league, and I'm going to start using it exclusively for team communiques. The good thing about chat messages is that they aren't expect to be meticulously crafted, and it's not weird to send a few chats in a row if you forget something or say something wrong.
The actual coaching part is pretty fun. Our first game was today, and we beat our opponent something like 16-1. You aren't supposed to keep score, but the kids always do. Once we got a lead in the double digits, I had to tell them to not announced the score after every goal. We have one kid who's awesome, and he scored about nine times. Lil' S2 is probably the third best player on the team, and he was better than everybody on the other team. Luck of the draw. It's a good thing too because even thought it's little kids, it's a lot less fun when your team is terrible.
We do have one "lost soul" on the team. You know the type -- the kid who doesn't even really know what's going on and is just as happy to stand on the sidelines and daydream as they are to play. We didn't have any subs today, so she had to play the entire game. The first half she was goalie, and she legit made a good save (or "save"). Granted, it was kicked directly at her, but still, she caught it. Everybody on the sideline was going crazy cheering for her, but it really should have been a score, because she caught the ball so deep in the goal -- her back was touching the net -- that it was well past the line.
The coaches are the ones who make the calls (there are no refs), and the opposing coach didn't say anything, so I was in an awkward position where I either had to take away this girl's shining achievement, or I had to not call a goal for a bunch of kids that were getting crushed and could surely use a morale boost. I decide not to say anything. It was more inertia than it was a calculated ethical decision.
Alright, it's super late.
Until next time...
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