I learned an important coaching lesson a few weeks ago. My 8 & 9 year old daughters play on a flag football team and I'm the coach. Truth is, nobody volunteered to coach, so I HAD to step in and do it. At the beginning of the year, I made it clear to the parents that we would be stressing fun (sounds ridiculous that this had to be said, but it did). Somehow, because I'm the only parent that stepped up, I felt like this allowed me to just kind of "show up" and coach.

Now, our team is definitely not the most talented, but every girl shows up for practice and games. Their attitudes are positive. They seem like they genuinely enjoy themselves, even though we have yet to win a game.

Well, when we played the first place team a few weeks ago, nobody had any fun. We lost 42-0, and it didn't seem that close. Not only did the other team have some great players, but their coach did a fantastic job. He was organized and had some great schemes. Bottom line- I got out coached. I did a disservice to my girls by resting on my laurels and thinking that keeping everything super simple was the right way to do things. Worst part was I could see the disappointment in my girls' faces.

I went home and worked on some new, "fun" plays. When we practiced them the girls enjoyed the new challenge. It was like they were telling me, "Finally Coach!"

Well, the rematch occurred this past weekend. No Hollywood ending here- we lost 28-14, but it was competitive. And most importantly, my team had fun! They improved and that made them feel good.

Even though we volunteer to coach, and sometimes we do it because nobody else does, we still owe it to the kids to be good at our job. We should spend extra time working on becoming better coaches. Trust me, you don't want to learn it the hard way. It hurts.
 

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