Lili playing "off-ball" in a non-amoeba moment.
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I learned how to swim, as an adult, I knew how to swim but I learned how to swim well from a guy named Bill Boomer, who had the biggest pot belly you ever saw and one arm and Bill was the consulting coach of the US Olympic Swim Team. You look at this guy and you’d say he could not even make it across the pool. He didn’t need to make it across the pool. He needed to know how to teach swimming. - Seth Godin on The Moment with Brian Koppelman 1/1/19.
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The first hard-fought soccer match of the season ended in a 1-1 tie.
Early in the game, Lili had taken a soccer ball, kicked at close quarters, to the head and fell in a heap to the ground. The spectators gasped and she struggled to her feet and ran sobbing to her mother. A close inspection revealed paint specks from the ball embedded in her forehead but otherwise no damage. After a few minutes, the six-year old jumped up and rejoined the fray.
For my part, I congratulated my granddaughter on her first header!
A few weeks earlier my son, Tyler, told me, “I am Lili’s head coach in soccer.”
“Really!? That’s great!”, I said.
“And, I don’t know what I am doing,“ Tyler lamented.
Tyler, knowing nothing about soccer, had signed up to be an assistant coach. Inevitably, he was volunteered as a head coach. He is, at age 28, likely the youngest coach in the league.
At the first practice, Tyler asked his charges what drills they liked. What followed was six-year olds describing a series of incomprehensible actions that sure sounded like fun. Tyler consulted a coaching book.
Soccer with six-year olds has not changed - a small mass of children following a randomly kicked ball in what looks like a giant amoeba.
After the game, I watched proudly as parents come up to Tyler and congratulate, thank, and shake his hand. The parent’s made a point of telling their kids to thank Tyler and the six-year olds all hugged his knees.
Seems you do not have to know anything about soccer to coach six-year old soccer. You just have to make it fun.
Today, on Mother’s Day what better gift can a child give his mother than to coach her granddaughter and a bunch of wily six-year olds?
How about you? Who will you coach? Share a story.
