Getting my kicks out of coaching

Growing up I always seemed to be playing sports and I learned quite a bit. Whether it was how to dribble a basketball with a paper sack on my head or how not to "get mouthy" or I wouldn't play, I took away plenty from my coaches.

As I have aged, I have tried to pass on what I learned by coaching, even though I don't have any children. It may take away time from family and friends but I always hope the kids learn something and have some fun.

I have lost track of how many teams I have coached but it is more than 15 basketball teams and a few baseball teams as well. And I have coached all ages, from first graders to seniors in high school.

But after a particularly tough basketball season this winter, I decided to hang up the whistle and leave coaching to the parents. Of course, two weeks after the season was over I was asked to coach a kindergarten and first-grade soccer team at the YMCA that had no coach.

Something about me that many know is I have never been a fan of soccer. If given a choice with a gun to my head, I would watch a Lifetime movie over a soccer game. I did play some soccer as a kid but didn't like it and gave it up. But, I suppose, hearing a team didn't have a coach found my microscopic heart and I decided to do it. After all, how hard could coaching kindergarten and first-grade soccer be? Just teach them how to kick, right?

I found out I was way wrong at my very first practice. I had several basic drills all planned but when the first two kids showed up to practice and were zipping up and down the pitch (that's a soccer field) I quickly realized these kids knew more than I did.

It was the first of many things I learned from the little ones.

I had to change practice on the fly and convert some basketball drills I knew to soccer drills. Then when I got home, I pulled up soccer drills and rules on the Google so I could be more prepared the next time. By the end of the season all of us, myself included, knew how to play the game better.

But the learning didn't just stop there. I also learned that in soccer the kids expect snacks after every game. In basketball I have never been asked, "Are we going to have snacks?" But this wasn't basketball and the kids were visibly disappointed when I said I didn't have any. So off to the store I went to get snacks for after games.

I also learned how winning is different with young kids. I have always tried to win every game and when my teams don't, I lie awake at nights trying to figure out what I could do differently. With this group, they won plenty. In fact they only lost once. But after every game, I had at least one player ask me, "Did we win?"

"Yes, we won 10-0."

"Oh good. Do we get snacks?"

As a matter of fact, one game the other team scored late in the game when the goalie watched the ball go by. I joked with them, why they let them score?

"Because they hadn't scored many goals."

Some stuff you just can't make up.

I learned lots more. Like no matter how many times we practiced it or I shouted it, they just didn't want to pass the ball. Instead it was a big group of kids around the ball until the ball squirted out and the group chased after it. But we were great at defense. Especially stealing the ball from each other.

I was able to sharpen my shoe tying skills but no matter how many shoes I tied, at least once every game a shoe went flying farther than the ball on an attempted kick. But even if their shoes were tied, there had to be a 100 times players would just trip over the ball or just trip on a blade of grass and go crashing to the ground only to hop right back up. I would be lying there until the stretcher came.

And for the first time in my coaching life I had to manage playing time based on who needed to use the bathroom or whose stomach hurt or who was just not wanting to play at that moment. Sometimes that even left us one short on the field but there are priorities.

One thing I could never stop doing though was laughing. How can you not when a player tells you "there is an 80 percent chance I will score five goals today and there is a 50 percent chance I will score a goal?"

Once a player instinctively touched the ball with his hands when it was coming toward his head. After I told him to try to keep his hands down and he turns and gives me an "I know" look.

"I don't have any pockets to put my hands in," he said as he then tried to stuff his hands down his shorts.

But the thing I learned the most was how to have fun coaching again. Even if the team hadn't won a game, just being around kids who enjoyed themselves like that reinvigorated me and made me sad to see the season end.

If the players took even a fraction of what I learned from them then they took away plenty. I may never coach soccer again, but I'm sure when basketball season rolls around my whistle will be within reach. And who knows, next time I see soccer on television I may not start looking for the Lifetime channel.