I will say that the last 3 months have been filled with a new challenge for me -- coaching! Sure- I've done a little coaching here and there, mostly as an assistant that filters in from time to time. The local AYSO league however signed me up as a head coach for the season due to being short volunteers, despite my email going something along the lines of - "I can probably help out 1 -2 times per week on an intermittent basis." This apparently translated into "I would like to do Saturday training events before the season even starts and be present 3x/week every week for 2.5 months." And so I was assigned a team...
The girls team was U12 and elected to call themselves the "Lemonheads" due to our fluorescent yellow jerseys! They were overall a great group of gals and I did enjoy working with them- although some practices were a bit more challenging than others given the gift of gab that some of the players have. The AYSO league as a whole is a recreational league- so all of the teams have a pretty wide spread of players, from those belonging to club leagues to those who have never touched a soccer ball at all! This wide gap in knowledge and skill level can definitely make the training sessions difficult to help everyone, but in the end it's also supposed to be a lot of fun for kids this age. We ended the season 5-3-1, so did have a winning record and I think most of the team if not all really enjoyed the season. Our best game was about 3 weekends ago- it almost brought a tear to my eye how beautiful our team was working together that game!! This was promptly followed the following 2 weekends by much bickering and sloppy passing....oh well...=)
I learned to have a great deal of patience, a slight ease to my competitive intuition and was starting to put together what motivates each of the players by the time the season ended. Right now, I'm pretty stoked to have a break from such a commitment outside of work, but it seems likely that I'll get pulled back into being a head coach again next year...I'll have forgotten the tough days by then =).
I did have a lot of support thru the season from the team parents, my assistant coach (and co-worker)-Tonya, and all of my friends on the island! A big mahalo nui loa to those folks and go Lemonheads!!
Here are some pictures from the team for you to enjoy!
