The Ups and Downs of Coaching

But I digress. I write to you today to inform you of my wonderful decision to volunteer my time and coach t-ball. I would tell you I don't know WHAT I was thinking when I signed up to coach, but that would be an outright lie. I knew what I was thinking... it fell along the lines of they didn't have enough coaches to go around last year and are still in need of help, so as long as my daughter wanted to go out, I was going to coach. After all, I did play softball for seven years, t-ball for one year and watched my daughter play last year, so I should do fine, right? NOT REALLY. I do have to admit I didn't have high expectations, I know after last year that most kids can't catch well, don't always throw at the intended target and they love to sit down while in the field. So my goal was to try and have everyone standing most of the time and get the ball to first base when possible.

Even so, I learned that something that is way different from playing to coaching is LEARNING. I noticed last year when my daughter started that she was afraid to catch. She has somewhat gotten over that fear now. However, it brought up the question to myself, how do I teach her to catch other than tell her just put your glove in the air and don't be afraid of the ball? I have to give praises to my dad for teaching me (and her) how to do that. And I also send kudos out to a good samaritan that helped me in one of our first practices. Thanks to her I now know better ways of speaking to the kids and teaching them the different aspects of t-ball.

Unfortunately, I do have a few children, three to be exact, that can make my night very stressful. One of the children likes to hit everyone in sight, not always lightly, and his only focus is wanting to bat. If it's not batting time, it should be time to go eat or time to play in the dirt. The other one is always sitting down, playing in the dirt, talking to somebody or getting in scuffles, usually with my daughter. As I am the only coach, I found out quickly during our first game that I can't be everywhere and see everything. We've had the speech as a team about keeping our hands to ourselves but I'm not quite sure how to handle they're acting out from there. As of last night though, I now have to volunteers to help out during games, so helpfully the watchfulness will improve.

The other child that acts up just happens to be my daughter. One of the first mistakes I made with her was deciding to have my daughter on the team I was coaching. I can't use the excuse that our schedules wouldn't conincide. The other t-ball team practices at the same time on the same field, so that defintely doesn't classify as an excuse. Why is it so bad you ask? Well, first my child believes that since mom is the coach, she has a pass to help boss the kids around. Second I try to make sure she doesn't come off as favored so she is never first at bat which drives her insane and third I think she tries to get away with more. I think next year, should I coach again, I will definetly put her on the other team

Other than those problems though, I really can't complain. It's fun watching the kids progress and there are some that are just great at being people. They help out, they want to be there and they're happy what ever position they're in (or at least complain very little). T-ball is full of fun most of the time for me, and I think for anybody watching. For example, you do have the kids that are to busy doing something else, whether it be playing in the dirt or staring at the playground to watch the ball roll right past them, then suddenly realize, hey, what was that breeze past my foot? Then there's the kids that don't want to be tagged out so they run any which way they can to avoid being tagged, even if it means running at the pitcher! We've had the ones that just forget to run to the next base so we end up with two on the bases, and we've even had the one that decided she didn't want to run anymore and just laid down between second and third base!

T-ball is non-competitive and this simple fact makes it more fun then getting into softball and baseball. Sure there are some kids that have to do better than everyone else, but at least with my team, they usually don't boast to the other players and it's more of a personal goal to them then anything else. Yes, I would definitely say that T-ball is for the most part the pure essence of what a sport should be.