On Being an Assistant

This year for club I made the decision to take a back seat and be an assistant. The main reason is that I'm pregnant. I will miss the last few weeks of the season and in anticipation of being miserably pregnant, I didn't want the responsibility of being a head coach. I also went down in age group so I didn't have to do any traveling. It has been good. They put me with someone who doesn't have a lot of experience and really wants to learn.

There have been some challenges like:

Learning to keep my mouth shut. I am so used to talking and being in charge, I have to stop myself and let him be the one to take charge. And sometimes, I blurt out without stopping myself. Oops. When he is explaining a drill I have found that asking questions works well. I feel like this does not show disrespect for him as the head coach and helps him remember things. The most common question I ask is “what is the goal?”. He usually has one, but just forgot to say what it is. Fortunately he is open to suggestions.

Accepting when my suggestions aren't taken. I guess this is life. (It happens in marriage too!) I ran a practice one time to work on something specific. I expected that some of my drills would be used later. They weren't. Not that those drills were anything special, but what was being worked on was important. I was a little bit disappointed that some things that I think are really important for young players weren't focused on. The important thing, even though things weren't necessarily done my way, is that the girls improved. And the coach did too!

There have been some benefits like:

Not planning practices. I take practice planning very seriously. My job is to do everything I can do to help make the girls better. My philosophy is that I can't expect the girls to do anything except what I have taught them. Practices are where we teach and they learn. So the good thing about not planning practices, is that I didn't have to think and plan. I just showed up to practice and taught and encouraged the girls. That's exactly what I needed this season.

Not managing parents. I hate to say it, but this can be a lot of work. It isn't all bad. One of the biggest things is just making sure parents get all the information they need in a timely manner. So that means always being on top of the information that needs to be passed along. There is also a small piece of dealing with parent drama. Usually I am able to keep this to a minimum, but since I wasn't the head coach I didn't really have to deal with it at all. Fortunately for the head coach, there wasn't much.

Next year, I hope to be an assistant again, but I will certainly offer to head coach if they need me to. And I hope to stay with the younger age group. I'm sure life will be more different than I can imagine with 2 kids!

#coachforhisglory