Today I lost a flag football game in order to please a handful of players. Now I preface this by saying what I did was absolutely the wrong thing. At the end of a close game when we had every chance to win, I put in a handful of players who were all clamoring to get the ball and –to a boy–had already had opportunities. I took the ball away from my talent and gave it to these kids because they were in my ear. One in particular was given two extremely costly opportunities and was not satisfied with either. In fact, he expected more. He expected to be fed the ball again and again and play the position he wanted to play until he reached a level of success in this particular matchup that satisfied him.
Frankly, it pissed me off. I was pissed that he was being ‘that kid’ and I was more pissed that I acquiesced twice. Those two plays resulted in a loss that should’ve been that teams 3rd win of the season. It moved them to 1-1 with me running the offense. This was an X’s and O’s game that I let get away from me when I was using it as a tournament tune up.
Yes, I understand that it is youth football in a podunk town and doesn’t actually matter. The record doesn’t matter but making bad choices based on the so-called squeaky wheel and or feeling like I can appease a kid and, well, shut him up. This is not the first time I’ve allowed another person’s whining and or needy behavior to determine my reaction. Learning from that is the real lesson here. If I allow myself to be manipulated by those kind of people–as I often have in the past–I am not only enabling, but putting myself into steadily worsening situations in my life.