The Only Rule of Coaching

This year, my 4-year old son is playing T-ball for the first time. My 8-year old daughter is in her 4th or 5^th year of tee-ball and softball. As the years have gone by, I’ve become more and more involved in helping out at games and practices. In the 100+ hours I’ve spent on this stuff, however, I’ve only learned/noticed one non-obvious thing And that is this:

When your kids are young, don’t coach your own child

My daughter's coach is a woman we know pretty well. She’s a short-haired athletic woman of about 40-years who plays softball herself. She’s known for her somewhat boisterous personality and yells at the girls in a lovingly joking way. She’s a good coach. Another coach in the league is a very nice, super-positive guy; he wears baseball pants, so people are afraid of him and are skeptical at first, but he’s great once you get to know him. He’s a darn good coach.

The female coach’s daughter has refused to wear helmets, refused to play the field, refused to “take a walk” after missing 8 pitches in a row and sat out entire practices and games a couple times. The male coach’s daughter, instead of throwing the ball to the pitcher of the opposing team, kicks it … very slowly … back to the pitcher. She loves to play first base, largely so she can chat with the opposing team. You can see how it troubles these coaches – two people that love baseball – that their kids clearly just aren’t that into it. It doesn’t kill them, but you can see that it does bum them out somewhat.

So me and another mom, to avoid having our being the coach make our kids act like little shits and/or make them dislike the game hatched a plan last Saturday. We decided that next year, when my daughter is in 3^rd grade and hers is in 4^th grade, I would coach her daughter’s team in the 4^th-6^th grade division, and she would coach my daughter’s team in the 1^st -3^rd grade division. Thus, no coaching our own kids: no problems!

Of course, I agreed to this before realizing that a man volunteering to coach 4^th-6th grade aged girls, when that man has no familial relationship whatsoever with anyone on the team isn’t the type of volunteering normally accepted by a standard park and recreation department (I can just see myself writing “I just really enjoy working with girls of that age” on the form: that would go ever well, I’m sure). So I doubt I’ll follow through, but it seemed like a reasonable idea earlier this week.