I had a moment of weakness and complaint today, approaching the head of the parks and rec and asking why some teams get to keep players 5 years in a row and other don’t get to keep players in that fashion. I am a little bitter about the whole situation, because I feel like the team I wound up with is talented but can’t really match up with the stacked deck of a particular team in my league. In other words, its the same thing I see every year for certain coaches.
This year I have three teams and two days removed from the season openers, I haven’t been able to get a full practice for a single team. Weather is an issue, but more often than not it is parents who aren’t quite able to make the practices for a variety of issues. At the 10-12 level I have two players who are basically meeting the team for the first time and a third we haven’t seen in weeks and he is supposed to be the starting quarterback.
8-9, where all the drama is (there is a team just like this at the 10-12 level, but whatever) I’m dealing with a team that doesn’t really know the offense or the defense very well and given the limited number of players overall (9 with 6 on the field), we haven’t been able to run much of anything. We do have confidence to go with a handful of players who have never played before and are very timid. I am going to need to manage people better than I have in the past in order to ensure the players have fun and are successful.
I don’t have a thing to say about 6-7 yet. We haven’t seen enough players to even know what we have beyond a handful of ‘starters’. I have a cornerstone to build around and hope to play some good games. It will be fun to see what goes on with this group.
Some Thoughts:
- I think we are at the point where we need to part with our cat. The last cat was born around the same time as my allergy-stricken boy and while she affected him, it was nowhere near as bad as the new kitty. This relationship is unhealthy for my son and I need to make the call to move on from the cat–from cats in general.