Coach Speak

So for the past four seasons he's played, I've coached my son's soccer team. It's fun, most of the time, it's a chance for me to give back and share my knowledge of playing soccer competitively for years and it's also a chance to spend some extra time with my son rather than just being on the sideline while he plays.

We only play for about two months, which now that I type that out, seems like a long time for six and seven year olds. I mean, that's one-sixth of the year, but we only have six practices and then about 10-12 games. There's always a routine throughout the season, no matter the age of the kids. The first practice all the kids are super excited to be there. They're hoping they have one or two friends from school they know on their team and they're a bundle of pent up energy from sitting at school all day.

It's my job, as a volunteer coach, to direct that energy into something that's both productive and educational (learning and improving their soccer skills) and fun for them. I'm never sure if I succeed or fail, but looking at past teams I've coached, it looks like 80 percent of my previous teams have continued playing. If the goal of youth recreation sports is to encourage participation, than keeping 80 percent of five and six year-olds playing seems pretty good.

This season was my first coaching in the Under-8 age group, the Shane's Rib Shack Red Bulls. Before, I could basically go out there with enthusiasm and run around for 45 minutes and the kids had a good time. This season, they were a little older, so that idea didn't exactly work. They still wanted fun, but they wanted to learn and be challenged a little more (though I learned after the first practice not to call the drills "challenges" as one kid got really upset about it.).

Over the course of the season, we got to know each other. I learned who had friends on the other teams, what they enjoyed doing, what their favorite ice cream flavor was. As much as I enjoyed the games and watching the team slowly get better in their skills, I enjoyed just as much the times when they weren't in the game and were just hanging out on the sidelines waiting their turn to play. Somewhere along the way, a few of them started making "grass salads" where they'd pull the grass up and pile it up into a "salad" which would then make it's way on to my shoe while I was busy actually coaching.

Coaching is basically yelling "spread out" constantly in different ways trying to convince six and seven year olds to share the ball and pass. 

Hunter - Of everyone on the team, Hunter was by far the quietest. He was also one of the smallest kids on the team, but he came to every practice, tried hard and improved significantly. He loved playing goalie more than any kid should.

Zoe - Zoe was a spark plug. I'm not sure she ever gets tired. It didn't matter if she was on offense or defense, she would run the length of the field even if it meant she was out of position. Despite my best efforts (as well as those of her parents) she was a ball hawk who wanted to be in the middle of the action.

Kevin - In our first practice, I was offering minimal defense as we were working on dribbling. Kevin pulled off a move I'm  not sure I could do at 17, let alone seven, and I knew I was in trouble. Kevin is a gifted soccer player who, at times, looked bored on the field. I'd let him score two or three goals in a game (often in the first two minutes he played offense) and then ask him to see how many assists he could get.

Kelly - I've seen Kelly on other teams over the past few seasons and was excited to have her on our team this year. She would do anything I asked her to, was always excited, and was the originator of the grass salad. She would always ask if it was ok if she went to sit with her parents when she wasn't in the game, but as the season went along, she started spending more time next to me on the sidelines and we got to talk alot.

Parker - Parker, it turns out, lives in our neighborhood. His dad came up to me after practice one day and asked where we lived and after I told him, he said he thought he recognized me from my walks. He also practiced with the wrong team the first day of practice (each team had half the field, and he went to the other half.) Parker loved playing goalie and was always enthusiastic.

Billy - Through no fault of his own, Billy was my most challenging player. He was so high energy that it was sometimes difficult to keep him under control either during practice or games. Like Zoe, he would chase the ball all over the field regardless of his position. But as the season progressed, I saw Billy's energy as a blessing as he always kept me on my toes and made sure I was ready to do what I needed to do.

J.B. - I played soccer with JB's dad when we were in high school together. JB is an excellent defender who is every coach's dream in that he just wants to do what he can to help the team. In our second to last game, he wanted to be goalie but I couldn't work out the player rotation, so I promised him he could be goalie to start our last game. As soon as he got to the field for that last game, he said "coach, I'm goalie, right?"

Jayden - I'm not sure Jayden liked me at the beginning of the season. Or maybe he was just adjusting to a new team like everyone else and was struggling with that adjustment. Either way, he was frustrated with me after two practices. But then something clicked and he was excited to be at every practice. He really didn't like when players would leave their position to chase the ball. I saw him away from the fields this week and he made sure to say "Hi Coach Luke" and gave me a high five.

Andrew - My son, who is the entire reason I coach youth soccer to begin with. I wasn't sure I wanted to do it this year, thinking it would be nice to sit on the sidelines, cheer for him and the team and just enjoy the games. But about two weeks before the season start, I asked him if he wanted me to coach. He said he did, so I let the recreation department know. It's hard not to show favoritism and I wonder if sometimes I didn't go too far the other way, not starting him more often than not because he was the coach's kid. He never complained, though he did emphasize that he did NOT want to play goalie.

My son, Andrew, with his medal following our season.

There were times during the season that I really just wanted to be able to sit at home. Whether it was a long day at work or (more likely) me staying up too late the night before watching baseball, sometimes I didn't want to go. But once I got out there and saw our team, it was so much fun.

After our last game, Andrew wanted to watch his friend play in the game after ours. One of the players on that team was a girl I'd coached my first season of coaching. I went over to say hi to her and her parents and her dad told me how much both she and he enjoyed that season and ever since then, he judges his daughter's coach in comparison to how I did.

"You did such a good job of not only making it fun, but also teaching them something," he said. "Not all coaches can talk to kids but you're really good at it."

That, obviously, made me feel good, and it was fun to watch her and the rest of the kids playing.

I'm looking forward to not coaching basketball or baseball (the next two sports my son will most likely play as the school year progresses) and just being a sports dad, but when next Fall rolls around, it'll be time to coach soccer again and I'm already looking forward to it.

(S)he who conquers that fear

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

- Nelson Mandela

So Caitlyn Jenner will be honored at this year's ESPY awards with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. This has people upset. For those who don't know, Jenner is the former Bruce Jenner, an Olympic athlete who, at the age of 65, is a transgender woman who appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair with the headline "Call Me Caitlyn." Predictably, some were ok with this while others were not.

But then, for some reason, people who have never cared, or even knew about, the ESPY awards were outraged (because the Internet runs on outrage and if we stop being outraged, the internet will stop) and saying what Caitlyn Jenner did wasn't courageous or isn't deserving. My Facebook feed was full of pictures of soldiers who lost limbs with captions saying they were courageous while saying explicitly or implicitly that Jenner was not.

This is not to say that people who go off to war and fight are not courageous and are not heroes (though I haven't heard anyone say Lynndie England is a hero in quite a while). The overwhelming majority of soldiers are courageous. Just as the overwhelming majority of firefighters are courageous for running in to burning structures or, for those of us afraid of heights, for climbing up ladders to rescue cats out of trees, which I assume is still done because my knowledge of firefighters comes from 1950s television.

But to limit courage or heroism to only those types of actions is either being willfully ignorant or it's pushing an agenda.

There are people who would tell playing a game of baseball is not courageous, but when you're the first black player in Major League Baseball and you're getting death threats for daring play the game, you're both courageous and a hero. Riding a bus doesn't seem courageous, but when you're Rosa Parks and you refuse to give up your seat to a White man, it's an example of courageous living.

The middle school boy who stands up to the kids picking on the unpopular student is courageous and likely a hero, at least to the unpopular student. But there are those who post on social media who would say that student is not courageous because he didn't go off to war. There's the four-year old who is scared to death of learning to swim but takes the first steps into the pool to overcome her fears. That kid is courageous, but there are those who want you believe that child has not displayed courage because it doesn't fit their narrow definition of the word.

So again, there are people who will try to limit your understanding of what courage is. I urge you to not listen to these people on this issue. They may be very friendly, very smart, very caring people. But in this instance, they are simply wrong. Simply because they choose to ignore other meanings of the word does not make it so, any more than people who tell you racism doesn't exist doesn't make it so. Courage comes in many sizes, shapes and colors.We all have our own fears and we all have the capacity to be courageous in our own way when we take the step to confront and conquer that fear. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

The Thread

More than a month ago, a friend of mine posted a question on Facebook about the NCAA. It caught my attention for a couple of reasons. First, I've come see how much of the NCAA is built on the myth of the "Student Athlete" and how much we (myself included) take what the organization says as the truth when in reality they are perpetuating their own myths to sustain their current model. Secondly, the person who posted this isn't what you'd call a huge sports fan, at least when it comes to his social media presence so I was surprised to see such a question from him.

Now normally, I'm not one to engage in debates on Facebook. It's not that I don't have opinions (sometimes even strong ones) on things. It's that I don't know how much, if any, the debates will have on changing anyone's mind. I also worry that I don't know enough about a certain topic to be able to say definitively things are one way or another and by the time I'm able to research a given topic to get a better understanding of it the topic has disappeared from my Facebook feed.

But for whatever reason, I figured I had a pretty good handle on the NCAA's myths and had the time to discuss the topic, so I jumped it. It was a fun discussion and I was able to pull from several things I'd read on the subject to counter a lot of the misinformation being presented. I didn't really think any more of it after a few hours, but as the day went on, the thread kept going. Unlike a lot of internet discussions, this one never descended into being mean spirited despite the disagreements that developed over the topic.

One tangent led to another, and another, and after a few days, the original topic was all but forgotten. It meandered from one thing to another, seeming to eventually settle into a comic book/Sci-Fi/Pop Culture discussion as many of the participants would likely self-identify as "geeks." But the cool part about it is the thread just kept going. Hour after hour, day after day, the same people kept coming back. It was, in a sense, like the TV show Cheers where it just became the place to gather and talk about whatever was going on. New friendships were formed. I learned new things about old friends.

A few days ago, it hit 10,000 comments. A PDF of the thread would be more than 500 pages. I have no idea how long the thread will keep going, but it's been a fun month getting to meet new people and discuss anything and everything, even if a lot of it things I don't understand. (I may be the only participant who not only hasn't seen the new Avengers movie, but the only one who wasn't super excited about it coming out. For some reason, they still let me hang out there.)

Numbness finally wearing off

If it was one season it would have been frustrating.

If it was two seasons it would have been discouraging.

Three seasons just became depressing.

After that, I'd kind of grown numb to it.

It, in this case, was losing. For the past five years, the Cubs have done a lot of it. Like a lot lot. You know how when you're in those early teen years and you tell your friends you like a girl and they ask if you just like her, or if you "like her" like her. Losing was like that for the Cubs. They didn't just lose a lot, they lost a lot lot.

From 2010 to 2014, they lost a minimum of 87 games and never won more than 75. And yet I watched. Year after year. I'd subscribe to the Major League Baseball package online and despite the fact I could watch pretty much any game being played, I'd watch the Cubs. Granted, by mid-August I'd turn my attention to the playoff races and starting watching fewer and fewer Cubs games, but I watched a lot of losing baseball.

By 2013, I'd grown numb to the losing. I still enjoyed watching baseball, but I can't say there was a lot of joy in watching the Cubs. Fortunately, their broadcasts are among the smartest in baseball, so even though the team was losing, they were having discussions about the game to make me a smarter fan. There were times I'd turn on the game almost out of obligation of being a fan, like it was something I was supposed to do rather than what I wanted to do.
 
To be fair,  I had low expectations. I knew the teams weren't going to contend. In the early stretch of losing, the team was getting old and had overpriced veterans that were tough to trade for prospects. A new regime was hired in 2012 after the team lost 101 games, but they preached patience as they sought to overhaul the team. And overhaul they did. Pretty much anyone who had any value who could be traded was. The team did get better in 2013, "only" losing 96 games.

My wife all but gave up on the Cubs. She'd ask every now and again how the game went, but the losing really zapped her interest. We got married in 2003, which you may remember as the year the Cubs came within five outs of reaching their first World Series since 1945. You may not remember that, but if you're even a moderate sports fan, you know that as the Steve Bartman year. (No, it wasn't his fault.) My enthusiasm for the team got her excited. The next year the Cubs went back to the playoffs and she became a fan. But by the time the losing started, we'd had a kid and she'd moved up the ladder at her job and had more responsibilities. Watching a losing team wasn't really a priority for her and as you noticed above, it'd almost become a chore for me. Life's short and there's only so much time you can spend watching a losing team before you just start tuning it in as background noise for your summer.

But here's the thing about all that losing. There was a method to it. Instead of losing with higher priced veterans, the Cubs were busy signing players to short-term contracts and then trading them to teams contending. The losing also meant higher draft picks. Coming in to the season, the Cubs had the top collection of prospects in all of baseball. They will likely all not reach their potential, but what they represented was something Cubs fans haven't had in a while - hope.

You could dream on the prospects. They are young, talented, and all coming up to the team around the same time. Not only was there hope for the future, there was excitement. The first couple of them came up to the team during the second half of the 2014 season. Now, instead of watching winning teams battling for the playoffs, I was watching the Cubs on their way to an 89 loss season.

Hopes were high for the Cubs going in to this year, and so far they haven't disappointed. They had their first winning April since my son was born (he's six now). But for me, the excitement is back. I look forward to watching the games. It's obvious to say winning is fun, but it's even better to have any kind of feelings again watching my team.

More than anything, it's fun to get frustrated again when a guy grounds in to a double play or doesn't field a grounder cleanly. It's fun because there's an emotion attached to the game that I haven't felt in a long time. I'd honestly forgotten how much fun baseball can be when you're team's winning. Instead of tuning in to a game expecting to lose, I watch now with an expectation of winning. The team has an offense that is fun to watch. They hit well, get on base and play aggressively. Up and down the lineup the Cubs have hitters, not just guys filling out a roster. It's exciting.

As I was writing this, I was watching the Royals and Tigers play (the Cubs already played today, yes, I watched at work) and was exchanging tweets with a Royals fan I'd met on the site. They Royals had a more tortured recent history than the Cubs, but had an improbable run to the World Series last year that has rejuvenated the fan base. During the game, the Royals were up 4-1 but the Tigers had the bases loaded and Miguel Cabrerra, one of the game's best hitters, at the plate in the late innigs. This friend tweeted "A plate appearance on May 1st is taking months off my life." I replied "Nice feeling, isn't it."

His response, "This is awesome."

It is awesome to feel something again. It's even better to wake up looking forward to baseball.

On Death and Community

 

Today was not a good day. Five nursing students from Georgia Southern University (my alma mater) were killed this morning in a traffic crash early this morning commuting approximately an hour away to Savannah, Ga. I didn't know any of them and I'm not sure I know anyone who knew any of them. Yet I'm saddened for the loss of the lives of five students who were studying so they could have a career helping the sick.

So I'm saddened by the loss of life from these students who woke up this morning thinking they had many years ahead of them. I'm more saddened than I would have otherwise been had they been four students from another university or if they were four young people who weren't attending college but instead going to work.

 As best as I can figure, the only reason this crash and these students have me feeling more grief than I otherwise might is the tenuous connection we shared. I was never in school at the same time these students were. At best, we may have been in the same football stadium a time or two watching the Eagles play, but I wouldn't have known them and they wouldn't have know me.

What doe that say about me? Am I so jaded that I only care about a tragedy when it tangentially affects me? Why don't I care as much for the others who tragically lost their life today?

My best guess is that we're wired to feel connection. Take 10 people and split them into a green team and a yellow team and people on the same team will feel a connection to each other even if they didn't know each other beforehand and the teams were chosen at random. This connection to a team probably helped our ancestors as they worked together to try to form societies that worked for the protection and health of the group. Outsiders represented a threat to their survival as they competed for scarce resources, so a sense of connection and belonging ultimately worked to ensure their tribe continued.

But I don't live in a time where outsiders need to be viewed as a threat. As a middle-class American in the 21st century, I have an abundance of resources (more than my fair share). Yet the centuries and centuries of feeling a connection to my group still exists as an innate part of the human experience.

I'm certainly not trying to diminish this feeling and say, either implicitly or explicitly, that the grief so many of my friends feel from this tragedy is unwarranted. That's not the case at all. It's reasonable and natural to feel grief over the loss of people from your group. And clearly losing a close friend or family member is different some losing someone who went to the same school you did more than a decade after I graduated. Instead, I'm hoping I can start feeling more empathy for people who didn't also attend the same college or cheer for the same team or even just share my name. Just because they were not a part of any group I identified with doesn't make their life any less important and their trials and tragedies any less meaningful.
 
*I've seen some unconfirmed reports that a sixth student died, but haven't seen anything official to that effect. My apologies if got the number incorrect.