Coach K

Kate sent me a note a couple weeks ago, a forward from an RSD post from a local student seeking a coach for a local university's women's ultimate team. She asked if I was interested in joint coaching the team.

After several fits, starts and miscommunications, we finally connected with the team, and signed up. We were to be Coach Kitt and Coach Kate. Exciting! I think it'll work out well, since one or the other of us can cover practice, what with Kate travelling for work and my heading out for my UCPC talk, or ultimate tournaments, or just plain exhaustion from too much overplanning.

Practice is from 9-11 PM, which is just painfully late for an athletic endeavour to me. I can't figure out how the university managed to secure the late night lights schedule with the surrounding town. But they did, and that's when the fields are open, and last Thursday is when I went to my first practice with the team.

There were eleven players at practice. When I showed up, the team was doing a square drill. They were running it slowly, but started running harder as, one by one, they realized "Coach" was there.

I think I did okay, for my first run at coaching. They played better than I was led to believe they could play. All of them could catch, and all of them had the basic fundamentals of throwing. If the players stick with the sport, they can become very good.

I often feel uncomfortable with telling people what to do. There's a certain state of mind I can get into where I don't mind it, and can be very good at the leader role, but it's not a typical state for me and I have to work at it.

In this case, I did okay. I tried to encourage with everything I did, learn as many names as I could and be as positive as possible. In the end, however, I was still essentially bossing them around.

The next practice is tomorrow. Kate should be there, which should be very good: having a coach who can play will be very advantageous.

Kris has started calling me "Coach Kitt." Cracks me up.