Bad News Bears

I'm the coach again for my daughter's soccer team (with lots of great parent helpers). Anyway, this will be about the 4th season together for most of the girls and so they know each other and the ropes pretty well. This comes with advantages and disadvantages. Advantages are that they actually know how to play the game, know their strengths and weaknesses and look out for each other. The disadvantages are that they can get into little cat fights and they can act REALLY bored at practice. This past week at practice was quite frustrating to me because the girls really had little energy, some said they were bored, many complained of 'mysterious ailments'; hence I was a grumpy coach. It is hard because at the end of the day, I would prefer NOT to be the coach, but it is a volunteer-based program and parents need to step up or there is no soccer.

Now that we've had one game, AND we won hands down, maybe the girls will have a bit of a skip in their step. I am also stepping up my game by trying to find more fun, active, fast paced drills for them at practice. One reward for them is Coaches against the whole team. I've done this for a year and a half now where I'll grab a parent or two and have us play the girls. The girls actually "love it", are more aggressive (which is a risk to me) and they seem to actually pass and play as a team better. So, that is my other trick...I'll threaten 'No Coach play' if you don't shape up.

More on the Bad News Bears. In our league most of the teams have matching fancy uniforms (with names and numbers), they have expandable seats for the kids to sit on a bench, and they seem more 'put together'. Our team is more a 'just get by' kind of team, we bought t-shirt's from Target for $7, we have no fancy bench, and often times we're all 'just making it to the game'. I'm certain at today's game the coach thought we'd be a cinch to beat, but we fooled them....heheheheeee. I know that is not good "sportsperson-ship', but it feels good to win regardless. Its all fun and games; right?

Picture is from last year....I'll have some from this year in a few weeks. We also don't do the 'store bought' pictures for our team, we just have me do the photos one Saturday before the game...its cheaper and more fun that way.