"Ask yourself: 'Can I give more?'. The answer is usually: 'Yes'."
-Paul Tergat, Kenyan professional marathoner
As a coach, I think we are a little bit like parents. We think our team of girls is the smartest, hardest working, most well behaved kids on the block! So when they fail you on this, its a bit heart breaking and what do you do as a coach but look at yourself and wonder, "Where did I go wrong?".
The hardest thing about coaching over parenting though, is trying now to single kids out and admitting that I don't always know what to do when things seem to be going the wrong direction.
So for Monday's lesson we got to play a sort of makeshift game of baseball using trivia questions. But when we tried to get the girls to work together in their teams, and giving them a little time to come up with team names we were stunned to look up and see one of the teams pretty much screaming at each other, someone crying, just anger, frustration, and absolutely no effort at being a team. I was taken aback, I had seen the signs of a problem happening but had kind of hoped it would blow over.
And I could go into details of the rest of practice but lets just say it ended with me telling the girls how disappointed I was and that they could not re-enter practice the following Thursday until they wrote me a letter letting me know what needed to change to make this a functional team that is plugged into GotR.
I think the thing that was somewhat hopeful was how all the parents embraced this and sent me messages supporting this decision. And Thursday arrive and the girls came ready to run. I didn't read all their papers right away, I wanted to get into the lesson, move on and move forward right away. They were beautiful, happy, and positive. They were the little girls that I brag about and they ran so hard that day. As a matter of fact they seemed to suddenly find focus. I did tell them, that I in no way expected them all to be best friends but that if they are having a problem with someone they need to talk to me about it and I will adjust teams and partners to make it easier for them to get along. That I would try better to pay more attention.
When I got home Thursday night, it brought tears to me eyes what I got to read through. Girls apologizing for not trying harder, not speaking out more, not trying to get along more. But some girls actually gave me as a coach some suggestions too that they thought might help. And I appreciated this because sometimes even as adults I think we have to admit that we don't always know what we are doing.
I have high hopes for this coming week, something tells me great things are to come.
Jillianne - we had a similar situation on Wednesday with GoT. For our warm-up, we had to do a "relay" of sorts. With an odd number of girls, naturally one team was a girl short. This proved problematic as the girls started fighting with each other becasue one team had an advantage. I think the middle school girls are a little more competitive... and everyone has an opinion lol.
ReplyDeleteI remember disliking that virtual baseball game warm-up from our fall session. As coaches, we had trouble understanding it... and then we thought, "Ok, how are we going to explain this to 10 and 11 year olds?" So we made up our own version. Run a short lap if you get a question right, do 10 jumping jacks if you get a question wrong.
I know you are coaching younger girls - maybe some of their anger/frustration was the inability to understand the instructions and taking it out on each other. I dunno, kida are people pleasers and might be afraid to tell an adult they don't understand things.
It sounds like you have a great group of girls. I bet they would appreciate it if you told them how much their notes meant to you! :-) Kudos for making a decision that the girls learned a lesson from.
That is actually in the next blog that is half written but not posted yet. Been a busy week. but the game they understood but i like the running a full lap and jumping jacks better. I think that would have gone over better.
DeleteI know the relay like warm ups and when we have odd numbers we put a coach on the team (usually me if I can help it because the girls know I keep it equal) or i split it into other groups. We have 15 so i often do 3 groups of 5 then.