I think flag football brings out the worst in me.
At the heart of it I am a highly competitive individual who truly believes he is a solid teacher and coach. The egotistical downside of that is an expectation to win. This season I am coaching three teams (6-7, 8-9, 10-12) and I have that expectation to win. The problem with that expectation is that I don’t have the athletes to win.
Early in my return to coaching (I first started back in Iowa but that only lasted a year–ended by the onset of grad school) I spent time with I9 sports. I loved the competitive nature of the league. There were playoffs and weekly awards and some really dedicated parents. Unfortunately for me, all of these people were already on teams that had been playing together for years. I, on the other hand, was approached to coach a Bad News Bears-esque squad of kids, some of whom had never played the sport. We didn’t do great. We broke .500 the two seasons I coached (no carry over players beyond my own kid). The key there was we were a rag tag bunch with limited practice and limited experience with each other. We were, however, fairly athletic. This season I find myself–at least with two teams–in a position of having limited athleticism on my teams and being surrounded by teams that, once again, have been playing together for a very long time. I respect that. I think it is really great for those teams to have that.
I don’t have that. What I do have is an inkling of hope that I can find kids to fill a role and have fun filling that role–working together to create a scheme that works for what we have. It isn’t going to be a season where everyone is expert at everything. Instead it is going to be a lot of experimentation and team building and learning the game. Fortunately, that is the stuff I love and the reason I still do this.
I have a chance here to help these kids develop a strong sense of self confidence and learn how to do some really great things that are beyond what maybe they thought they could do. If we can make that happen then we can probably win some games along the way. This isn’t going to be a season about rivalries as I expected it would be. This is going to be all the way about players and kids finding their identity on the field.
I’m looking forward to letting go of the competitiveness for once and just focusing on good football.