My C aching Debut

Coaching youth sports is a little like joining the conga line at a wedding. You’re pretty sure it’s something you don’t want to be a part of, but if you go to enough weddings, you will eventually be dragged in.

We signed Elliott up for the City of Decatur 6-7 year old fall soccer league, and Jaume, the dad of Elliott’s buddy, Albert, said he’d coach if I did it with him. Hailing from Barcelona and a lifelong player, Jaume’s familiarity with the game extends beyond mine (which essentially boils down to having watched some of the World Cup) so I deferred to his expertise.

At the first practice Jaume laid out cones for a footwork drill while I pleaded with the children to stop tackling each other. The exercise was to be done without any ball so, as the dutiful assistant, I collected the balls and was subsequently attacked like the only house on the block with any Halloween candy. Okay then, no more drills without a ball! There was a lot of giggling and an extraordinary amount of instances where a child attempted to kick the ball but instead stepped on top of it and wiped out, which incited more giggling and tackling.

We lost our first two games to the tune of about 10-0 but our third game was magical. We were trailing 4-1 at halftime and, until that point, we had stressed the importance of knowing one’s position. The kids listened a little too well. What I observed, because I am a coaching genius, was that the other team had five kids around the ball at all times and we had two at best. Positions were scrapped and the Falcons attacked the ball en masse up and down the field. We stormed back to take the game 5-4 and celebrated wildly while soccer purists everywhere cringed.

We went on to win a second game and battled another good team to a tie so we like to count that as a win, too. It was such a great group of kids and the parents

Comprehensive Women’s Health were the perfect combo of laid back and encouraging. Everyone improved and had oodles of fun. In one of the last games, Elliott took a corner kick and passed it to Oliver. Oliver deftly controlled it and passed it back to a charging Elliott who bent the ball into the far corner of the goal. It was beautiful and just enough to sucker me into volunteering to coach basketball as well.

Lynley S. Durre , M.D.

A week later I’m sitting in a conference room at the Decatur Recreation Center with 20 or so other coaches and we’re conducting a sophisticated draft to create teams for the 7-8 year old basketball league. It’s a little tense. Imagine a fantasy football draft with your buddies minus the smack talk and the beer and computer generated minutiae to guide you.

The guy next to me, who I learn has coached in the league for a decade, ranked all 150 of the players in order of ability. I scan my own notes from the skills assessment the week before and find some razor sharp insights like “nice kid,” “great smile” and “coachable,” but the soccer season taught me that this is all that matters.

That being said, everyone wants to be competitive right? I was proud to hear that one coach gave Elliott very high marks at the assessment, but quickly muffled that pride to sandbag my own kid’s abilities. I needed the league administrator to slot him in as a fourth round pick instead of first or second. The kid has a sweet shot, but he’s one of the smaller kids on the board so I don’t feel terrible. Plus it freed me up to spend my first pick on an 8-year-old girl named Lily who was listed at 65 inches tall! It might have been a typo, but I just couldn’t risk it.

Tim Sullivan grew up in a large family in the Northeast and now lives with his small family in Oakhurst. He can be reached at tim@sullivanfinerugs. com.

Obiamaka Mora, M.D.

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