Tag: youth

Coaching The Little Things – Soccer Edition

I co-coached my older son’s soccer team this past few months, boys aged 7 to 8, the U9 level. Last year I coached his team, also, in a less-competitive league with 4v4 play. This year we had the step-up, 7v7 with a goalie, and 11 kids instead of 8. It was much different in terms of energy from the number of players, plus welcoming new players into a squad that played together last season. Pretty early on I talked with my co-coach about how we’re going to have to Manage more than Coach. He runs a large furniture manufacturing company, and his insight saved me I don’t know how many shots of Jameson at practices and games.

I observed early on in my sports “career” (I threw shot put and discus in college) that successful teams put players where they are most naturally suited. If a talent shows up, how can a coach ensure the success and interest of the player AND the success of the team? Do what’s right for the player and the team, it’s easy to find that balance. We got a returning kid who was so fast and athletic and had such a motor that we created the Ranger position. He could play anywhere on the field, F-MF-D, because he was going to run the field anyway. It wasn’t in his nature to stay in an area, so we didn’t force him to. Put ’em where they fit. My co-coach was able to see how kids had a certain skill that would translate to a position, and he’d get them to really shine. And we wanted them to have fun. There’s no pay, no public glory, no shoe contracts. In fact, with the amount of driving, emailing, snacks, and gear, it’s wise to put a line-item in the family budget for “Soccer, Misc.”

And there were kids who were first-timing it. Rookies in the world of organized sports, or just soccer. And every dude comes out with his own experiences and ideas of how it’s going to go for them. But hey, as a coach, you have to help the players understand the boundaries and intention of the relationship. We’re here to get better via practice, so we’re the best in the game. Sportsmanship can be tough to teach, the idea and practice of being respectful of the game and players by playing fair, playing hard, and encouraging your teammates at all times. We called that last one “Teamsmanship”.

This was a tough one, because we had kids from 4 different schools. Last year we had 8 kids from 2 schools. So this year we had 11 kids: 6 from 1 school, 3 from another school, and 2 from different schools. I think I researched “youth sports team dynamics” as much as “drills for youth soccer that aren’t monumentally boring”. We weren’t as cohesive as I’d hoped, but that fell on my shoulders as the coach, in that we could have done some more team-building stuff. Some kids were like cousins, some like brothers, and some like professional wrestling rivals getting ready for the Bunkhouse Brawl at the KeyStone Fieldhouse this Saturday.

We had Alpha performers, Alpha personalities with Beta skills, Beta performers with Alpha drive, and everyone had their own Omega (not interested, gonna quit) moments. All of these have to be identified, welcomed, and addressed. As each kid had his own way of expressing happiness, effort, and disappointment, we were learning quickly how to help them embrace it and turn it into positive energy.

The league’s pre-season meetings and seminars rarely give you the heads-up about the dynamics of personalized coaching styles. I’m far from a guru, but I’m thankful I had experience with some of the players from last year, as well as the works I’ve read about working with boys, their energy, and especially with the Positive Coaching Alliance.

We’d get 2 hours a week with the kids before the game. I’d like to get more, but instead we’d encourage them to play soccer at recess, practice those passing drills, and ask parents to remind their guys about Sportsmanship and Respect. We had a great group of parents, too. It was so loud at a couple games that I had to give kids hand-signals instead of shouting directions. Preparation was a huge lesson!  By the time we started the game, we didn’t want to coach, we wanted to just remind the guys of where they should be and let them play and make their own decisions on the field. They all showed the ability to play well, play with a team, and everyone got a lot better by season’s end.

Our record, for the record, was 7-0-1. UNDEFEATED! 2 of those wins came against teams that were far more technically proficient than we were. Really great at passing out of the cluster – if you’ve watched a kid’s soccer game, the Cluster is the maddening huddle that migrates around the ball as it rolls around the field – and getting back on defense. We won against those teams sheerly by just PLAYING. Our guys were just out-hustling the other team, challenging everything. Usually around the 5th game, about 7 weeks in, I tell myself “This is it. Next year is no-go.” But this year I was already looking for ways to get better as a coach, in Soccer and elsewhere. If you make the practice/learning a FUN thing, the play/game takes care of itself. The best part of it all, for me, is when I see the kids and their families around town, and they say “Hey coach! I’m playing this sport this Winter, but are you gonna coach XYZ in the Spring?” Yeah, I probably will. Just gotta get the shoe contract worked out.

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To Have Died Young In One’s Prime

I started down a path that would have likely led to some disgruntled comments from people who would know of whom the original post was about.  And therefore I retracted that information.  But I will say this:

When people lament the loss of a life, “snuffed out too soon, gone before their time,” you have to really look at the circumstances around the death before we assign an appropriate check-out time.  When Brittany Murphy died a few years ago after a drug overdose, there were a LOT of people outside the Murphy camp but emotionally invested (for whatever reason) in her life, saying she had died too young.  Yes, she was young.  But you’re never too young to die from the illnesses you refuse to treat, such as drug addiction or flammable colon gas.  And how many people tried how many times in how many different ways to get Brittany healthy?  Ultimately it was a psychological drive to drugs, which then killed her, which had gone unrooted and untreated, and perhaps untreatable.  It’s sad.  And it’s even more sad when it happens to somebody who isn’t famous, who didn’t have any money to handle expenses, and leaves behind a family to pick up the pieces.  And by “family” I mean children, not a co-dependent  spouse or lecherous entourage lacking any discernible talent.

And at the same time, I noted the following in a moment on-stage a few years ago, while pondering the deaths of young people.

  1. Young men between the ages of 15 and 27 do dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb and stupid stuff more than anybody else, based solely on testosterone, lack of forethought, and a throbbing life-boner.  Driving drunk, driving fast, mohawks, energy drinks, fraternity drinking, borderline date rapes, parking lot fights, etc. Therefore they should all be defaulted into Organ Donor status.  Perfectly healthy crop of lungs and hearts and kidneys can be harvested for the poor folks waiting for one of these dipshits to roll his Jeep or mis-judge the cross-wind of a bridge jump.  I still can’t believe I’m alive considering the [OMITTED FOR LEGAL CONSIDERATION AND BECAUSE MY KIDS MAY READ THIS ONE DAY] for an entire month.
  2. The loss of realized potential is what is most crushing.  The time to share Life with that person ends, BAM, done.  Nothing more.  Grief sets in and confuses and crushes and drives people to sadness and despair and rear-window “In Memory Of” decals. When that life ends there’s nothing more that can be capitalized upon; no professions, no vacations, no kids or grandkids or victories on competitive cupcake bake-offs. 
  3. The person to which I thought of and referred to, originally, died before he hit 30 years old.  Model-like good looks, dashed in a tragic accident.  He’ll never get older than 28.  He’ll never wrinkle, or gray, or sag.  He’ll never wake to the cries of a screaming child 3 times a night and suffer a day of fatherhood and work and tiring of the Grind.  Because he drove too fast for the conditions, and an accident happened.  Really very sad, for the rest of us who are going through all of that.  Nobody will ever know what he looked like as a fat, balding, bitter desk jockey.  Lucky bastard.

So before we wail and groan when a life goes too soon, please look at the circumstances of it for a Reality Check.  At what age is somebody NOT “too young” to die?  I am hoping to die much like my great-grandfather, in his sleep at the age of 91, shot by a jealous lover.

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No. Comment. Please.

I am a comedian, along with a dad, husband, project manager, Condo Owner’s Board member, and dumbass.  Comedians minds don’t work like everybody else’s.  We struggle with the mundane, and we often have a hyper-observant nature, seeing sheer lunacy in something quite small, blowing it into zeppelin-like proportions, when really it’s no more than a child’s floating soap-bubble.  All the same, leaving a shopping cart in an empty parking spot should be grounds for having one’s photo posted on a website.  Oh hey… maybe I’ll start doing that…

Comedians also generalize.  Broadly-sweeping statements leave us open for retort, and stating anything on the internet increases the inroads of replies by a million-fold.  What humors me is the fact that many people have yet to grasp two key elements of web-published statements:

  1. Now that we have a chance to say something, very few people actually have something to say, but very rarely will that stop them from saying something anyway.
  2. When posting something in a medium that allows comments, one should expect at least SOME comments, but shouldn’t hinge one’s worth on the tone of the comment.

We’ve seen the Facebook posts of people saying they are going to lunch, YUMM!, or pictures of food-piles on plates, or statements that make us think “So you logged in to this site and out of your life to make THAT statement about some guy in a truck not knowing how to drive, yet didn’t post a picture of your abs?  What’s the point?”  So yeah, what’s the point? 

The best comedians use an economy of language that not only describes exactly what they want to convey about their subject matter, but they also don’t generalize.  To go so broadly as to say “Nobody does THIS” or “Everybody loves THAT” and NOT have an absurdity to make the statement a joke is to invite disagreement.  Example:

BAD:  Don’t you hate when you are taking a picture with your phone, and you drop your phone in the toilet land then you gotta let it dry?  [OK, I see where it’s going, but then there’s nothing after the “phone in the toilet.”  What’s the point

GOOD:  Don’t you hate when you are taking a picture with your phone, and you drop your phone in the toilet, and then you gotta ask the guy in that stall to hand it back over and he’s a jerk about it?  Broad, narrow, specific.

So, folks, if you’re gonna say something, say Something.  Two of my favorite comedians, Marc Maron and Jake Johannsen, have two phenomenal lines that sum up our online lives.

Marc Maron (about MySpace, and it still rings true):  Someday the aliens will come down here after we’re gone, and they’ll pull our old hard drives out of swamps and hook ’em up and say “Wow, they really thought they were important, didn’t they?”

Jake Johannsen (about people posting pics of their meals): Why are you showing that to people? If you think that’s normal, just hold your plate up to the table next to you and tell them “HEY! Hi! This is my food!  I’m gonna eat this!”  See how fast you’re asked to leave.

Oh, and Teens, please keep posting every video and picture of every debaucherous thing you do.  YOLO, but you will get fired many, many times. 

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