Having had crashing lows and inching highs over the past few weeks, I feel as though I am working my way towards a point where I know my place. And I don't mean that in a Harry Enfield-esque manner. I mean that LittleBear's football coach and I are gradually finding our feet as a working partnership, and I'm feeling more confident about what exactly my strengths are. I'm also becoming considerably more convinced of where my strengths aren't. Though I am prepared to change my mind on the latter given a bit more practice.
I had what can only be considered a baptism of fire on Tuesday, when training rolled around. Fortunately I went out of my way to be sure I arrived early. This was mostly with the intention of having a chance to discuss with Coach exactly what we'd be working on this week, and which part I would be best placed to take on. The best laid plans o' mice and men however... The traffic was abominable and Coach was stuck in it. So there I was, with no plan in place, and twenty-two small boys demanding to know what they should be doing.
With my newly-minted FA training, I did have half a clue of what I should be doing, and attempted to arrange them into mini "arrival activities" as they turned up. Which would have been a great plan if it weren't for the fact that by the time I'd organised three small boys, I turned round to find that another six had arrived. As I sorted those six out, the first three turned out to have no idea what they were doing, and another five were clamouring for attention.
And it didn't get much better. There were tears. There were fights. Occasionally moments of football broke out. Eventually Coach arrived, and a sense of relief washed over me. Except he didn't rush in and take over, despite my expectations and hopes. In retrospect, I am very glad he didn't. He even said, "No, you're doing great, I'm not going to take over. You do your thing." And that alone has done an enormous amount to help me have a bit more self-confidence and a bit more belief that it's all going to be just fine. No, I didn't do a stellar job, and yes, having all the parents watching what felt like a riot rather than training was deeply daunting. But after half an hour, we split the boys into two groups and ran two activities - me running one and Coach the other, with a swap after another fifteen minutes. I can confidently say that 11 boys is approximately five times easier than 22 boys.
But I did it. I didn't have a plan, I didn't have a well-thought out session. I didn't, in fact, manage very many of the things I was taught on my course. But the boys went home happy and (mostly) uninjured, which was top of the list of priorities from the FA, so I'm giving myself a tick for now.
Wednesday presented another challenge, in the form of a match for our new team. Normally Coach would take charge of such an event, except that we needed him as our referee, so instead I took charge.
The stress of trying to decide who should play in which position, if and when to substitute players, and what manner of instructions to shout was almost as great as herding 22 boys around in training. It became hard to tell if the boys were failing to respond to my instructions because they couldn't hear me, or didn't really care what I was saying. I suspect a spot of both. I also discovered the same problem that Coach has always had - you don't have a chance to do more than yell a couple of words as an instruction, so limit yourself to such imprecations as "get up the field!" or "back post!". And it is at that point that I found that that none of them were entirely sure which way was "up" the field, and the concept of "front" and "back" posts was utterly lost on them. The far side of the pitch is also a very long way away, and I do not appear to have a voice which projects well, so I screamed myself hoarse trying, and failing, to communicate with them.
It can't have gone too badly, as not only did they leave the pitch happy, but I even had some parents come and thank me. I don't think they were just being kind to the crazy-eyed lady who'd been screaming at their children, but you never know.
And finally, we came to the weekend, when Coach and I took our boys to their first under-seven tournament. This was yet another whirlwind experience, with the boys playing in a group of five teams, with every team playing every other team once, in a series of twelve minute matches. This took from half past nine until midday, and also involved having to leave the house at 8am to reach The Middle of the Fens.
Keeping the boys under approximate control, without strangling each other, breaking too many things, or getting lost was as much of a challenge as coaching them on the pitch. But between us, and with a lot of support from the parents, we kept them in place, and to my immense joy they played brilliantly. We had a few silly mistakes in the first match as they got used to the slightly different rules being implemented at the tournament, but they didn't let it get to them and even LittleBear played with enormous enthusiasm whether they were winning, losing or drawing. Not once did he collapse in tears, and not once did he give up sprinting after every ball. Nor was he alone. They all played their socks off, were absolutely buzzing by the end, and fully deserving of their participation medals.
So I feel that this week has blooded me as a football coach. But more importantly I feel that there has been a step change in how things are working between Coach and I, and I am much more confident about the coming season. Let's just see how training goes tonight...
Tuesday 21 May 2019
Wednesday 8 May 2019
Over the finishing line
Tonight has seen my completion of my FA level one training course, and I am now a fully qualified level-one football coach. Given that I've still never played a game of football in my life, there is a large part of me that feels that this is an utterly fraudulent claim, but I am determined to make up in enthusiasm what I lack in footballing talent.
Having been through the doldrums of questioning my ability and suitability for the role, I was overwhelmed by the number of friends who reached out to me, not just with words of comfort, but with practical and sensible advice. I am enormously grateful to have the kind of friends who know both when to be the shoulder to cry on and when to provide solid foundations for me. That advice, and support, has let me step back and think again about how best to be me in my new role, not how best to become the role, and it has lifted a weight from my shoulders. Knowing me as well as I do, that weight will return at times, as will the self-doubt, and the uncertainty and the stress, but I will be a little bit better prepared to handle it now than I was a week ago.
Among the things that I took away from the advice you lovely people gave me was the fact that Coach is just as new to having an assistant as I am to being an assistant, and that we will need to spend a while working together to find out how to make the best use of our abilities. That thought alone has made me stop and think about how I'm viewing our interactions and how much blame I'm shouldering for every occasion where things don't go smoothly.
The second significant point that I am absorbing is that I need to be me more than I need to be anything else. Raw football skills are not my key strength. Physical fitness is not my best area (LittleBear and I ran in a 3km together on Monday. He finished 1min40s ahead of me...) But, in the FA's "Four Corner" model of developing a player, technical skills and physical fitness are only two of the corners. Equally important are the psychological and social development of that player. So at LittleBear's match on Saturday, I made sure I got chatting to my boys when they were on the bench. I found out little bits here and there about their lives. I discovered which school the new boy goes to, and which subject Coach's son enjoys most at school. I discovered that one of my boys doesn't like maths; but he doesn't like it because it's boring and too easy. In increments I am getting to know the little people that they are, not the footballers.
During the match, I found individual things to praise in each boy, and when training came around this week, I tried to reinforce the praise when I saw them doing the same thing well again. I gave two of my boys individual challenges to try to achieve during the match, and was delighted when one of them really worked hard to manage his.
I may not be able to do a bicycle kick or a Cruyff turn, but I can make a reasonable fist of being a caring, interested human being, and I think there's probably a place for that in under-7s football.
Meanwhile I will leave you with some facts and figures.
There are over 70,000 qualified football coaches in England. The ratio of men to women is 91:9 (in September 2018). There are about six and a half thousand female football coaches in England.
There are approximately 2,200 Fellows of the Institute of Physics. The ratio of men to women is 10:1. There are about 200 female Fellows of the Institute of Physics.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the uptake of football coaching among female Fellows of the IOP may be relatively low. In fact, in the Venn diagram of life, I suspect I may be on my own in the middle...
Having been through the doldrums of questioning my ability and suitability for the role, I was overwhelmed by the number of friends who reached out to me, not just with words of comfort, but with practical and sensible advice. I am enormously grateful to have the kind of friends who know both when to be the shoulder to cry on and when to provide solid foundations for me. That advice, and support, has let me step back and think again about how best to be me in my new role, not how best to become the role, and it has lifted a weight from my shoulders. Knowing me as well as I do, that weight will return at times, as will the self-doubt, and the uncertainty and the stress, but I will be a little bit better prepared to handle it now than I was a week ago.
Among the things that I took away from the advice you lovely people gave me was the fact that Coach is just as new to having an assistant as I am to being an assistant, and that we will need to spend a while working together to find out how to make the best use of our abilities. That thought alone has made me stop and think about how I'm viewing our interactions and how much blame I'm shouldering for every occasion where things don't go smoothly.
The second significant point that I am absorbing is that I need to be me more than I need to be anything else. Raw football skills are not my key strength. Physical fitness is not my best area (LittleBear and I ran in a 3km together on Monday. He finished 1min40s ahead of me...) But, in the FA's "Four Corner" model of developing a player, technical skills and physical fitness are only two of the corners. Equally important are the psychological and social development of that player. So at LittleBear's match on Saturday, I made sure I got chatting to my boys when they were on the bench. I found out little bits here and there about their lives. I discovered which school the new boy goes to, and which subject Coach's son enjoys most at school. I discovered that one of my boys doesn't like maths; but he doesn't like it because it's boring and too easy. In increments I am getting to know the little people that they are, not the footballers.
During the match, I found individual things to praise in each boy, and when training came around this week, I tried to reinforce the praise when I saw them doing the same thing well again. I gave two of my boys individual challenges to try to achieve during the match, and was delighted when one of them really worked hard to manage his.
I may not be able to do a bicycle kick or a Cruyff turn, but I can make a reasonable fist of being a caring, interested human being, and I think there's probably a place for that in under-7s football.
Meanwhile I will leave you with some facts and figures.
There are over 70,000 qualified football coaches in England. The ratio of men to women is 91:9 (in September 2018). There are about six and a half thousand female football coaches in England.
There are approximately 2,200 Fellows of the Institute of Physics. The ratio of men to women is 10:1. There are about 200 female Fellows of the Institute of Physics.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the uptake of football coaching among female Fellows of the IOP may be relatively low. In fact, in the Venn diagram of life, I suspect I may be on my own in the middle...
 |
| All by myself? |
Thursday 2 May 2019
Another step forwards, and four backwards
On Sunday I completed the third full day of my training for becoming a qualified football coach. I now only have a handful of online modules and a "sign-off" session to complete. It was another day jammed full of physical exertion and new information, and in its own right was rewarding, taxing, challenging, interesting and fun. But I spent a good portion of it feeling somewhat unmotivated and demoralised. Not because I kept on landing on my arse when attempting to play against Real Football Players, though I did that a remarkable number of times. And not because our coach was able to find a very long list of areas we could improve in the session we ran, though she certainly managed that.
Among the many areas we were dealing with was the idea of creating individual plans and goals for each member of our team - not simply running training sessions that address a general principle, but working out how to draw some particular learning objective out for each player, whether that objective is a technical skill, a psychological strength, a social skill or a physical one. Not simply aiming to practice "defending" but making sure there is a challenge to stretch the players who are already excelling as well as those for whom defence is not their metier. Oh, and to always remember that we need to be age appropriate, and that it should be fun.
What can I possibly find in that to demoralise me? Other, obviously, from the fact that if I were to actually start trying to do all the things suggested I would pretty quickly end up with a full-time job on my hands. Or, indeed, I would start needing to run training sessions five days a week to try and cover every suggested aspect of football, instead of the one hour a week that we have. And if I did that, it wouldn't be long before there were no players left in the team as they'd be exhausted and fed up, as it would no longer be fun.
Being me, naturally anything vaguely challenging slathered on top of a bedrock of sleep-deprivation is simply Too Much, and my immediate reaction to everything that was thrown at me was to feel inadequate. It all feels too hard, requiring a level of understanding, empathy, clarity of thought, observation skills and coaching skills that I don't have, or don't know how to acquire.
On top of the overwhelming nature of the content, I also have to contend with my own psyche and its inability to function in the real world. Frankly, that's a considerably bigger problem. Let me explain...
For a start, my LittleBear's football team already has a coach, and I am only becoming qualified so I can help him. Coach is, rather alarmingly, young enough to be my son. He is full of youthful enthusiasm and yet possesses minimal tact. He is impulsive and excitable. He gets into a huff easily, and calms down easily. I, on the other hand, require almost constant reassurance that I'm not a complete failure. I don't take criticism well, and I'm more or less incapable of speaking up and saying, "I'm not happy with this situation." We are not obviously well-suited to working together, though get on well as general-purpose human-beings.
However, this mis-match in personality brings us to training and matches, where Coach runs things, and I meekly do as I'm told. And then, because he's young and bumptious, he'll bounce over and tell the boys I'm working with that they're doing things wrong. And in my mind, by implication, I'm doing things wrong. Add to this the fact that every training session and match has a built-in supply of spectators in the parents, some of whom have been Real Football Players, or Real Coaches, in a former life. Nothing engenders confidence in someone who is cripplingly anxious like having a helpful parent wander over and gently say, "Any time you want a hand, I'm happy to help out." Not exactly a vote of confidence is it?
I have, in the past ten days, driven home from both matches and training in tears. I have struggled to write this post, to try to put into words the warring factions within me of loving the kids and loving the football, but hating the responsibility and the self-doubt. It has involved a great deal of introspection to disentangle my own anxiety and low self-esteem from events that have occurred and decide what aspects were entirely inside my own head, and which I need to look outside myself to address. Being me, my initial reactions to any slight setback are utterly dominated by a self-pitying "woe is me" feeling. After several day's reflection I reach a more balanced viewpoint. I do need to talk to Coach about letting me at least try to do things my way, instead of instantly stepping in if he thinks he knows best. I do need to speak up with my own ideas and suggestions from my training, and not simply step back and be passive. But I don't need to take offence at things that are said without malice, or those that are said through a surfeit of enthusiasm and passion for the game.
Most of all, I have realised that if I am going to make any reasonable attempt to both do a good job of helping this little football team and not push myself to breaking point, I am going to have to put some serious work in on my own self-confidence. I can't afford to let volunteering break my spirit - for my own sake and for that of my wonderful bears, big and small. The team may need an assistant coach, but my bears need a wife and mother who is happy in her own skin and enjoying her life. At the moment I feel desperately, tearfully anxious that I will not be able to find the balance required to do both things.
Among the many areas we were dealing with was the idea of creating individual plans and goals for each member of our team - not simply running training sessions that address a general principle, but working out how to draw some particular learning objective out for each player, whether that objective is a technical skill, a psychological strength, a social skill or a physical one. Not simply aiming to practice "defending" but making sure there is a challenge to stretch the players who are already excelling as well as those for whom defence is not their metier. Oh, and to always remember that we need to be age appropriate, and that it should be fun.
What can I possibly find in that to demoralise me? Other, obviously, from the fact that if I were to actually start trying to do all the things suggested I would pretty quickly end up with a full-time job on my hands. Or, indeed, I would start needing to run training sessions five days a week to try and cover every suggested aspect of football, instead of the one hour a week that we have. And if I did that, it wouldn't be long before there were no players left in the team as they'd be exhausted and fed up, as it would no longer be fun.
Being me, naturally anything vaguely challenging slathered on top of a bedrock of sleep-deprivation is simply Too Much, and my immediate reaction to everything that was thrown at me was to feel inadequate. It all feels too hard, requiring a level of understanding, empathy, clarity of thought, observation skills and coaching skills that I don't have, or don't know how to acquire.
On top of the overwhelming nature of the content, I also have to contend with my own psyche and its inability to function in the real world. Frankly, that's a considerably bigger problem. Let me explain...
For a start, my LittleBear's football team already has a coach, and I am only becoming qualified so I can help him. Coach is, rather alarmingly, young enough to be my son. He is full of youthful enthusiasm and yet possesses minimal tact. He is impulsive and excitable. He gets into a huff easily, and calms down easily. I, on the other hand, require almost constant reassurance that I'm not a complete failure. I don't take criticism well, and I'm more or less incapable of speaking up and saying, "I'm not happy with this situation." We are not obviously well-suited to working together, though get on well as general-purpose human-beings.
However, this mis-match in personality brings us to training and matches, where Coach runs things, and I meekly do as I'm told. And then, because he's young and bumptious, he'll bounce over and tell the boys I'm working with that they're doing things wrong. And in my mind, by implication, I'm doing things wrong. Add to this the fact that every training session and match has a built-in supply of spectators in the parents, some of whom have been Real Football Players, or Real Coaches, in a former life. Nothing engenders confidence in someone who is cripplingly anxious like having a helpful parent wander over and gently say, "Any time you want a hand, I'm happy to help out." Not exactly a vote of confidence is it?
I have, in the past ten days, driven home from both matches and training in tears. I have struggled to write this post, to try to put into words the warring factions within me of loving the kids and loving the football, but hating the responsibility and the self-doubt. It has involved a great deal of introspection to disentangle my own anxiety and low self-esteem from events that have occurred and decide what aspects were entirely inside my own head, and which I need to look outside myself to address. Being me, my initial reactions to any slight setback are utterly dominated by a self-pitying "woe is me" feeling. After several day's reflection I reach a more balanced viewpoint. I do need to talk to Coach about letting me at least try to do things my way, instead of instantly stepping in if he thinks he knows best. I do need to speak up with my own ideas and suggestions from my training, and not simply step back and be passive. But I don't need to take offence at things that are said without malice, or those that are said through a surfeit of enthusiasm and passion for the game.
Most of all, I have realised that if I am going to make any reasonable attempt to both do a good job of helping this little football team and not push myself to breaking point, I am going to have to put some serious work in on my own self-confidence. I can't afford to let volunteering break my spirit - for my own sake and for that of my wonderful bears, big and small. The team may need an assistant coach, but my bears need a wife and mother who is happy in her own skin and enjoying her life. At the moment I feel desperately, tearfully anxious that I will not be able to find the balance required to do both things.
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