Monday, March 9, 2009

Now that I'm a coach, I don't know shit about sports

If you notice I haven't been blogging, it may have to do with the fact that I'm entrenched enough in coaching a high school sport that I barely know what is going on in any other area of the athletic world. And I coach girls tennis. Actually, I love girls tennis. The rallies can be great, the practices can be, at times uplifting, the matches are usually pretty close and the players are all similarly sized headcases as I was in my teens. Here are a few highlights and lowlights of my experience thus far:
1) Winning my first-ever match as a coach
2) Lowlight: going 0-4 after the initial match.
3) Finally getting really nice uniforms ordered and the team outfitted
4) Lowlight: The rejection of almost ever team uniform available, including the Nike border skirt every other team wears.
5)Watching my 3-20 players improve.
6)Lowlight: Having to wait for more improvement.
7)Realizing I have to tell girls NOT to let the ball hit them.
8)Lowlight: Going 0-3 against in-county rivals. We lost to one team 3-2 twice.
9)Lowlight:Actually hearing myself say, "IF you hanf out at that "T," you won't be playing doubles for this team any more, followed by telling a boys player not to say "Good job," when our girls lost a first set tiebreak after being up 3-0.
10:Calling out one of my players for supposedly listing "Mary Jane" as her best friend on Myspace.
11:Lowlight: Trying to get my players to deal with bad calls effectively, except for aforementioned player who is pretty much immune to the guilt one could associate with making bad calls.
12: Lowlight: Possibly setting a World Record for the fastest team loss in the history of the world. 18 minutes is really fast.
13: highlight: Day to day, all is awesome in the coaching world. I've learned tons about the game from coaching, and oh, yeah, I got my groundstrokes back in the process.