Exhale.
It has been a whirlwind of a week. There are a lot of things happening at once and not all of it is wonderful. For the sake of inner smiles, I’ll start with good, go to bad, and go back to good in the end.
Here’s some good: I got to see my eldest run track for the first time. I was super proud of him. I watched track quickly become his favorite sport and watched him have some decent times despite not being equipped with the right shoes or having very much practice in certain events. He was proud of himself, especially in distance where he beat kids he swore up and down were faster than him. Moreover, he did it in the craziest fashion imaginable. He ran a 100m dash and within a minute of finishing that race they were lining him up to run the 1600m. He did that race less than a minute and a half after the 100m. Dude hadn’t even caught his breath. Beast mode.
I like to use that term, beast mode, in regards to my boys because it reflects a certain killer instinct and ability to rise above common performance. Unfortunately, the beast comes out of coaches as well. I’ve been seeing it more and more in flag football and my dumb ass has been feeding in. It doesn’t take a whole lot for me to turn into one of those coaches lately, and I am certain it is at least partially inspired by doing too much and getting involved in petty conflicts. It is supposed to be about the kids and not about a coaches’ ego or desire to be the leader of a winning team or desire to defeat another coach whose ego and attitude you find personally offensive. This is not about taking someone down a peg.
Hell, I am not even playing. I’m coaching. No pay, no real stake other than my stake in the players. Nothing at stake beyond ego and I need to invest less of it in winning or losing and more of it in putting the kids in position to succeed.
That is the good I’ll end with. I’m watching the kids enjoy this and I enjoy them doing it. So, maybe thats the focus I need to have. That and that alone.