Put Me In Coach, Vol. 2

Tryouts are in the books and we have a roster of 19 guys, no seniors. We’re building something over here…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I wrote a little bit last week about the practice conditions we have to deal with — inclement weather, lack of space, little to no disc time, etc. etc. Today it was especially frustrating. The crazy wind combined with the lack of space was a real blower. We had them doing a quick dish drill going the length of the blacktop (we had the whole thing today!), with any travels or dropped discs resulting in a sprint to the end of the blacktop and a run back to the end of the line. I thought our head coach did a great job working conditioning into a disc drill, and incorporating the entire space and the sidewalk into what we were doing. Creative thinking. The wind was so unbearable that not every team could finish the drill. Discs kept flying over the fence, into cars, and onto the street. I swear that the kids probably got as much conditioning jumping over fences and chasing after the discs flying over the place as they did from the actual conditioning parts of practice. It was ugly. It was just a real nuisance, and it made me long for the days when all you had to do was run across a huge field to catch up to an errant disc, you didn’t have to jump fences and dodge cars and weave between parents and students.

The worst part about it though, was that we only had the blacktop for about an hour before another team took over. Whatever progress we were starting to achieve had to be put on hold because of time constraints. Add along to that, the kids just seem really anxious to start working on throws and drills and all that. Obviously conditioning isn’t their favorite thing to do, but you can tell that they’re anxious to move beyond that and get to really play. They get amped when we do drills, even when they’re a shit show. I’m really excited for them, and I hope we can figure out our field situation soon, for their sakes.

As mentioned, we have them doing lots of conditioning stuff. I’m quite tempted to join in, but let’s face it, I’m too lazy/big/lazy/slow/lazy to do it. So… yeah. But maybe soon. We do a combination of conditioning, air alert/jumping stuff, stretches, and agility drills. They say the conditioning is getting easier, and they look much improved from the previous week. I like that sometimes when they feel something is too easy, they try to make it a little tougher. For example, for our grinders we had them doing 5 pushups before stair sprints, but they felt it was too easy so they bumped it up to 10 pushups. I like that they call each other out on some stuff, rag on each other for maybe not doing a drill correctly or not pushing it. I also really like that they encourage each other to talk. They take turns leading stall counts when we do stretches and that kind of thing; one of the captains will call out a dude and tell him to start counting. I don’t know if they know how valuable it’s going to be once we actually start playing, to have teammates that feel comfortable talking to each other on and off the field.

And here’s where I start feeling a little weird about it — even though I’m sure I come across like a total a-hole most of the time, I actually really hate yelling at kids/people. And somehow, I always end up as bad cop. There’s a lot of bad cop-ping that could be done with these kids when it comes to discipline and focus. Generally, they’re really good kids, but there’s still much more goofing around and slacking off than I’d like during conditioning stuff. Part of me wants to let them have fun, because that’s why they play — it’s fun and they like hanging around with their teammates. Lord knows I did my share of being a general d-bag/nuisance at practice. The other part of me wants them to get it together because they want to win a championship, and they need to be a lot more focused on doing things completely and doing things well if that’s what they want. That’s something I’m figuring out, and I’m sure that as I get to know the guys more and start to feel more comfortable about my role and what my boundaries are, I’ll say something about it. For now I’m Goose-ing on the inside.

Another thing that’s weird is the female coach/male team dynamic. There are four of us (so far, haven’t met the fifth guy yet) on the coaching staff, three males (two of whom are teachers at Pritzker, so they’re familiar with the guys) and me. I don’t want to say that I don’t think the guys respect me, but I think they just don’t really know what to think about me because I’m shorter than all of them and I’m soft-spoken even when I’m trying to shout and I defer to the male coaches when we’re addressing the team as a whole. I feel like I’m in the “Who are you?” phase still, like they’re still trying to tease out if I’m cool or not, or if I know anything about ultimate at all. Other times I think they don’t care, because they still make crude jokes and say ridiculous things in front of me. *shrug* Another thing to figure out.

That brings me to something else — dang, it’s kind of hard to coach. I’ve always had mad respect for coaches, but it’s been brought to a whole new level right now. I can’t really explain it, but for me, teaching a kid how to do something vs. teaching a rookie on your team how to do something feel completely different. I guess a big part of it is that I don’t have that familiarity/comfort factor with the guys yet. I only come in three to four days a week, for two hours at a time. I don’t know their personalities, how they react to things — heck, I don’t even know their names! It (inevitably, *eye roll* *foghorn*) reminds me of JSA.

My first year, I had a kid who was just real quiet and kept mostly to herself. She opened her mouth to speak to me (and all the other staff members) maybe a handful of times, and I can barely remember what her voice sounded like. But she had friends and she seemed to have a lot of fun with them. I’d see her hanging around with them and goofing off, so I knew that she didn’t have a problem opening up in general, she just had issues opening up with us, the staff. Maybe it was unfamiliarity, maybe it was a trust thing. Either way, I tried to be patient, and I was persistent with trying to talk to her and getting her to open up. I backed off and gave her time and space when I sensed that she was getting frustrated or uncomfortable, but I never stopped trying to get to know her and trying to feel more comfortable with us, and I let her know that I was always available.

That was a tough situation, but I spent every day with the kid, and I saw and spoke to her every night. I learned that she didn’t hate me or the staff or anything like that, she’s just a guarded, kind of awkward kid. I learned how she reacted to things, how she should be approached in certain situations. Observations and some semblance of familiarity go a long way. Today I helped a kid out with his flick. Let me pause here while all of you who have ever seen me throw a flick commence laughing. *foghorn* And he’s a lefty. Oh boy. We got a lot of reps in, from all different wind angles, and I think we made a little progress. He was throwing flatter and with more spin by the end of it. But that kind of focus came and went. He’d throw four or five decent to good throws in a row, and then he’d revert back to bad form. He reminded me a LOT of that quiet girl I had at JSA. I’d talk to him, talk him through what I wanted him to do, joke around, make dumb Ms. Graf jokes, and he was stonewalling the hell out of me. He’d nod and smile occasionally, but I couldn’t get him to respond to me in any way. I was trying to get him to pancake catches instead of trying to back away from them, but I’m not sure he was getting what I was saying. I’m not sure if he’s just another quiet, kind of awkward kid, or I’m just horrible at connecting with these dudes.