Put Me In Coach, Vol. 3

*big girl sigh*

There were times this week when I felt like the Mike Leach of high school ultimate.

I would love to think that I’m a tough coach with a heart of gold, but sometimes I’m pretty sure the guys just think I’m a douchebag.

On Monday, I ran our conditioning practice, starting with the usual repertoire of plyos, abs, and shoulder work. I don’t normally “run” practice, but our head coach and the other assistant coaches were busy/not there, so I stepped up. Unforch, I forgot that kids can sniff out a green teacher/sub right away. Vicious. So the guys were dogging it. They were more concerned with joking around with each other than with practice. They were dicking around, not putting even minimal effort into doing anything (let alone doing them right), and I didn’t say anything. Back when I was “The Mean(est) RA (Ever)”, I was much the same way. I didn’t shout or yell or beat my chest or gnash my teeth. (I don’t think I did, anyway.) At the very beginning, I explained the summer school rules, my rules, and my expectations, and that was that. After that, I expected them to know what’s right and what’s wrong, and I believed that I shouldn’t have to remind them. They should know when they’re breaking a rule or acting a fool. And for the most part, they did. They would all start causing a ruckus at floor meeting, and I’d just fall silent or look over at them (Well, I say “look”; I’m told it was called the “glare of death”, or something of that nature, which I believe *foghorn*). I wouldn’t try to talk over them, I wouldn’t repeat myself. I’d let them finish their conversations and their giggling, because they were only wasting their own free time. And every time, I never had to raise my voice; the offender’s floormates would always get her back in line.

I think generally that’s my philosophy on this kind of thing. I don’t want to have to raise my voice for something trivial. I don’t want to hand out timeouts like a pre-school teacher. I don’t want to have to continually remind them of what’s wrong and what’s right. We’ve explained it to them. As coaches, we also abide by them. So they should know. But I have never seen them goof off like that when the other coaches are around. They joke around and they talk, but they don’t completely blow it off. So I let them finish the warmups and then I called them in for a quick chat. As calm and composed as I could, I told them to think about their goals, and the work and effort it would take to achieve those goals. If they felt that their effort and their work would get them what they wanted, then good on them. But if they didn’t, then they needed to keep themselves and their teammates accountable for their work. After that, they did their abs and wallsits in silence, except to encourage struggling teammates.

The rest of practice was not all of a sudden all better. I wanted them to do a series of “monster laps” inside the school, with stuff like grinders and line jumps in between sets. But they whined about how nice it was outside and not wanting to be indoors, so I let them run outside. Coach gave me the green light to have them run as many as I wanted them to run. Not knowing the distance of each lap, I settled for what I thought was a nice, round, reasonable number: 10. Cue the groans. Apparently I had doomed them to a 5 mile run. Well, it was more of a 5 mile jog. It took them AN HOUR to complete it. AN HOUR. I’ve run/walked/cried/crawled a marathon at a pace faster than that (but not by much *foghorn*). And here’s the thing, I know they were cutting corners. Not all of them completed the entire ten laps. I may not know everyone’s names, but I can recognize them all, and I’ll be damned if all of them actually ran by me 10 times. I was asked for multiple “bathroom breaks”. They’d run past me and start walking halfway down the block (“I’m Asian, not blind” *Rosenwinkel voice*). I’m actually pretty sure they only ran like 7 laps. But being the kind heart I am (read: it was 5:45 and we’re not allowed to keep them past 6), I let them go back upstairs for their 30 burpees to close practice. And I was being generous, you know? I was originally planning on two sets of 25, but decided not to because we were running out of time. BUT OF COURSE they gotta clown me then, too, talking about “19, 20, 21, 23…”. Which, again: Asian, not deaf. Anyway, Coach asked me in front of the huddle how they did that practice. I didn’t blow up anyone’s spot, but I said they were “passable”.

I’m not really sure what it is — if it’s the fact that I’m a new, unexperienced coach and they can sense that I’m tentative and unsure, or if it’s because I’m a girl, and they don’t respect me as much as they do the other coaches — but I’ve always felt that they react to me a little differently than they do to the other coaches. I’m trying to be more sure of myself, to be more confident. Sometimes I think Coach sees that, as on Wednesday before we headed out to the park he said to me, “You’re the boss”. Yeah, I am the boss of those teenage boys! But for real, I needed that though.

Or maybe my voice just isn’t loud enough. That could be it too.

It’s been interesting. Obviously, different kids respond to things in different ways. There are some guys who have really responded to me being tough on them. I LOVE that they step up and get their teammates in line, really listen to me and echo what I’m saying when I’m not being loud enough. There are some guys who actively try to get better when I’m telling them they’ve done something wrong, and there are some guys who pout and hang their heads and completely check out of practice. I get that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar (or however that saying goes), but I’m not trying to be best friends with a bunch of high school kids, I’m trying to help them win a city championship.

Other than those little behavioral issues, I’ve actually really enjoyed practice this week. I’m finding that my mind runs at about a thousand miles per hour every practice, thinking up drills and exercises and games we can use to work on improving various different things. I have like a virtual GoogleDoc in my head of drills for specific facets of the game, and it’s SO FUN to implement new things and watch them get better at it. I’m still working on being better at explaining and actually running the drills, though. We always have to go through a couple iterations to get the kinks all the way out, before they fully understand what we want them to focus or work on in that particular drill. It’s kind of strange to not have a consistent attendance showing from all the coaches (meaning it’s weird that we can’t all make every practice), so I feel like the progression of things we have been working on at practice has been really disjointed. It’s a weird balance to try to make sure the kids are learning what they need to know to compete, you’re doing what the coach wants you to do, and making sure it all makes sense in the grand scheme of things, all without stepping on anyone’s toes or overstepping your boundaries. I just sent out a (nerdy, overzealous, probably unnecessary) e-mail to the other coaches about stuff I think we should work on at practice this week. *foghorn* I’m such a geeky rookie. Hopefully I learn how to control myself as the season rolls along.

The major reason I’ve been loving practice lately is that we have FINALLY been able to move outdoors. The drawback is that we’re practicing on a rock hard field that could maybe hold a shrunken endzone and about fifteen yards out of it, but beggars can’t be choosers. We also have a barbed wire fence to deal with, but we’ve only had one lost disc incident so far. The problem with that is that the guys are SO EXCITED to finally be outside and actually doing stuff with discs that they’re too hype to listen or follow directions well. It’s a problem, but hopefully they’ll settle this week.

What I’ve enjoyed even more are THE GAMES! We’ve started CUJO play, and our first games were today. I am extremely proud to say that we have started out the road to the 2012 city championship unde-effin’-feated. We played against my former summer league captain and general homie Seymour’s team, Oak Park River Forest and beat them 11-6, and then we beat a mish-mash team of New Trier/Lane Tech (Whitney Young 4evr) 9-7. I really wasn’t sure what to expect at all, but both games went a lot better than I expected. I was really impressed with the throws, grabs, aggressiveness, and field sense I saw. We’re not exactly world beaters yet, but there’s a lot of raw athleticism, desire, and aggressiveness on this team that you just simply cannot teach, and I’m really, really, really excited about what we’ll look like in May after we’ve put the work in.

P.S. I know SO MANY NAMES. LIKE, ALMOST ALL OF THEM. Mad proud of myself 😀