Help kids learn and develop amid difficult times
One of my most memorable youth-sports coaching experiences was the first season I coached my son in T-ball. Having played baseball my entire life, I couldn’t wait to coach the sport I loved so much. I had unexpectedly coached a couple years earlier when I signed my daughter up for Under-6 soccer and the team needed coaches. I had never played soccer, but how could I say no? After all, I had been working for years at an organization that tells volunteers that experience at that age does not matter. All that were needed were a willingness to learn and patience! I had a lot of fun coaching my daughter and learned quite a bit about soccer—and parents, and the craziness of youth sports. I would never trade that particular experience. But now, I was ready. I had been playing catch with my son for over a year with the hope he would fall in love with the sport as well. Like most youth-sports stories, this one didn’t go as planned!
As many people know, at that level one of the key responsibilities of an administrator is to do one’s best to create teams of equal talent. Usually, this means holding a skills-evaluation session before the season begins, and drafting players after. Now, because I was a first-year coach and did not have an assistant, I only had my son on the roster before the draft. Because every other team started with two players (both coaches’ kids), I had first pick.