ITA Learning Project - My Journey from Youth to High School Coach – Post #4

I’ve just finished the first week on the field with the kids. It was quite the learning experience.

One of the first things to figure out was how I was going to interact with Mike, the Head Coach.  Like I mentioned in my first post, I had plenty of interaction with Mike last year when he coached and I worked the scorer table. But that is completely different than coaching. Much of this week was spent with me figuring out what he wanted me to do and figuring out what is was OK for me to say to the kids. Like I mentioned last time, I spent my prep week documenting ways to teach a few rides and clears. Along with these, I found some help online to develop practice plans that brought these together in a series of drills that built upon each other. We did a couple of them the first few days and Mike asked me to introduce the drills and run them. My coach voice returned very quickly, and I found myself in the middle directing two groups of 20 kids each running the drills at the same time. While I was handling the kids, Mike got a chance to sit back and evaluate the whole thing, without having to look for specific things that need corrected. It’s a much different thing to look for the good things in practice drills than it is to look for things to improve. With me taking the remedial tasks, he got to see if the strategies I wanted to try would be a good fit for our team’s skill level.

By the end of the week, I think Mike started to see that I could be more than just another adult to help keep control. We started breaking kids up and running positional specific drills, with me taking the defense. When he suggested this, I was able to pull out a list of drills that I could run with the poles (in lacrosse, the defenders use longer sticks than the attack and offensive midfielders, so they are called “poles” as opposed to the “shorties” who use the traditional size sticks).  By doing some research and having a variety of drills to work positioning, footwork and stick skills ready to go made this a much smoother transition for everybody.

So, I think things are going to go well between Mike and me. That leaves the 38 kids on the team for me to figure out.  A good number of the upperclassmen I already knew. I coached most of the juniors and seniors when they were in middle school, so those connections came back easily. I’m also taking advantage of my son Tim’s connection with the team to help. Last year when he was a senior, the coaching staff didn’t break up as much to handle different parts of the field. When it came time for the poles to work drills or work on strategy, Mike pretty much had Tim direct things. That worked pretty well, since Tim was a good student of the game., it got to the point that Tim’s nickname was “Dad.” Me stepping in as somebody that helped Tim learn what he knew helped my situation as the kids figured I knew what I was talking about.  As it turned out, I also knew about half of the incoming freshmen from when I coached them when they were at the youth level. This familiarity with the kids made it much easier for me to step in and feel comfortable. As I’m being reminded, it’s crucial to be organized and confident when coaching, just like in classroom teaching. If the kids sense you’re disorganized or think they can get one over on you, there’s a good chance you’re going to lose control of at least part of the group.

My next big step is to remember all the names of the new kids. That is always a challenge for me anyhow, but it’s a bit more difficult when I have to recognize them with and without helmets.

I’m feeling OK with being able to add value to practice and instruct strategy during practice.  But, we’ll be starting scrimmages soon, so we’ll see how quickly I pick up in-game adjustments.