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TimmyDaddy
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By Tim Sullivan
/
20in
Fa loons
My C@aching Debut
Coaching youth sports is a little like
joining the conga line at a wedding.
You’re pretty sure it’s something you
don’t want to be a part of, but if you go to
enough weddings, you will eventually be
dragged in.
We signed Elliott up for the City of
Decatur 6-7 year old fall soccer league,
and Jaume, the dad of Elliott’s buddy,
Albert, said he’d coach if I did it with
him. Hailing from Barcelona and a
lifelong player, Jaume’s familiarity with
the game extends beyond mine (which
essentially boils down to having watched
some of the World Cup) so I deferred to
his expertise.
At the first practice Jaume laid
out cones for a footwork drill while
I pleaded with the children to stop
tackling each other. The exercise was
to be done without any ball so, as the
dutiful assistant, I collected the balls and
was subsequently attacked like the only
house on the block with any Halloween
candy. Okay then, no more drills without
a ball! There was a lot of giggling and an
extraordinary amount of instances where
a child attempted to kick the ball but
instead stepped on top of it and wiped
out, which incited more giggling and
tackling.
We lost our first two games to the
tune of about 10-0 but our third game
was magical. We were trailing 4-1 at
halftime and, until that point, we had
stressed the importance of knowing one’s
position. The kids listened a little too
well. What I observed, because I am a
coaching genius, was that the other team
had five kids around the ball at all times
and we had two at best. Positions were
scrapped and the Falcons attacked the
ball en masse up and down the field. We
stormed back to take the game 5-4 and
celebrated wildly while soccer purists
everywhere cringed.
We went on to win a second game
and battled another good team to a tie so
we like to count that as a win, too. It was
such a great group of kids and the parents
were the perfect combo of laid back and
encouraging. Everyone improved and had
oodles of fun. In one of the last games,
Elliott took a corner kick and passed it
to Oliver. Oliver deftly controlled it and
passed it back to a charging Elliott who
bent the ball into the far corner of the
goal. It was beautiful and just enough
to sucker me into volunteering to coach
basketball as well.
A week later I’m sitting in a
conference room at the Decatur
Recreation Center with 20 or so
other coaches and we’re conducting a
sophisticated draft to create teams for the
7-8 year old basketball league. It’s a little
tense. Imagine a fantasy football draft
with your buddies minus the smack talk
and the beer and computer generated
minutiae to guide you.
The guy next to me, who I learn
has coached in the league for a decade,
ranked all 150 of the players in order of
ability. I scan my own notes from the
skills assessment the week before and
find some razor sharp insights like “nice
kid,” “great smile” and “coachable,” but
the soccer season taught me that this is
all that matters.
That being said, everyone wants to be
competitive right? I was proud to hear
that one coach gave Elliott very high
marks at the assessment, but quickly
muffled that pride to sandbag my own
kid’s abilities. I needed the league
administrator to slot him in as a fourth
round pick instead of first or second.
The kid has a sweet shot, but he’s one
of the smaller kids on the board so I
don’t feel terrible. Plus it freed me up
to spend my first pick on an 8-year-old
girl named Lily who was listed at 65
inches tall! It might have been a typo,
but I just couldn’t risk it. ESI
Tim Sullivan grew up in a large
family in the Northeast and now lives
with his small family in Oakhurst. He
can be reached at tim@sullivanfinerugs.
com.
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December 2014 | INtOWn 19
