Commitment

I understand commitment. I guess my understanding of it is different than that of other people.

Meg's soccer coach emphasized that everyone should be at practice by 5:30 yesterday. Not 5:45. Not 6:00. We got to practice a few minutes early and started kicking the ball around. The team mom got there a little later and said that none of the coaches would be there. I told her that I have no problem with coaching the girls, but a little notice would have been nice so I could prepare some drills.

The team mom asked me to coach and I agreed. I waited a while and the assistant coach for the other team showed up and took over. I asked him if his team was going to scrimmage, like they normally do and he said they were. I told him that when they do I could take the younger girls aside and work with them.

When it came time for the scrimmage I took over and set up a little scrimmage between the six girls that were there. They were disappointed that they did not get to scrimmage a real team. I was very sympathetic to them. The older girls scrimmage every practice and they never do. It seems that they older girls are the priority to the coach.

I had the girls scrimmage for a while and then I stopped them and taught them what off side is, how to handle the ball if they are the goal keeper, strategy for each position and strategy for throw-ins. They were all messing around quite a bit, but that is expected because of the way their coach runs practices. There is usually so much down time in between drills that they naturally mess around.

Near the end of the practice, they assistant coach from the older team told me that picture day was on Saturday. He said that he did not know what time, but asked me to hand out the order forms. I really came away from this practice disappointed in our coach.