My husband is THE BEST coach ever. I'm sure of it. Who else spends HOURS and HOURS making cuts for a U14 soccer team?! ONLY HIM, I'm sure.
Where we live, soccer is THE SPORT of choice. It's like hockey to Canadians - something you live, breath and dream. Every game is treated like the Champions League finals (this includes P.E. scrimmages and recess intramurals) and the boys get extremely invested in the match whether they are a player or a fan. It's also BIG TIME MAGIC, that black and white ball - a fixer of LIFE. We're talking academic improvements and spontaneous recoveries from "serious" injuries. Mmmm hmm.....many-a-broken legs, asthma attacks, and sprained ankles have been instantaneously cured through the arrival of a soccer ball ;)
Phil hasn't coached soccer since our first year here. Instead, he's been focusing on Varsity and Junior Varsity basketball and has created a program that rivals that of the football program (and actually wins the interest of most students in high school). The middle schoolers, however, still enjoy this favourite game of the nation and so making the U14 soccer team is a MAJOR DEAL. When they found out that Phil would be coaching the team this year, they were eager to prove themselves in P.E. by showing persistence and hard work during the fitness blasts and activities. It creates a minor (ha!) problem when you have an entire middle school trying out for a team with only 16 spots.....
Here he is after school today, making revisions to "THE list" (keep in mind that he has made a billion drafts of this list and that he started these drafts LAST YEAR when he found out he would be coaching the team):
I suggested that he should keep everyone, but as you can tell he ignored my opinion and stuck with his gal that understood the tough decisions that laid ahead....(check out that "Daddy, I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND YOUR TROUBLES" face)!!!!! Ahhh, these two were like two peas in a pod after school.
Back to Phil. Being the best coach ever. If only you were here to see how sick-to-his-stomach this entire process was. Cutting it down to SIXTEEN boys.....when you have an endless squad of impressive kids - all giving their absolute best effort. Gosh. His mind was racing as he considered every angle possible - grades, behaviour, improvement, dedication, family relations, etc. There were kids with low grades that he wanted to motivate. There were kids with poor behaviour that he wanted to inspire. There were kids who went to summer soccer camp and had improved significantly. There were younger brothers that were more skilled than their older brothers, but was it really going to be okay to cut one and not the other? How about the triplets? You can't just keep one. And then there are the kids that are just amazing kids - good students with kind hearts. BAH. Put in an impossible situation, there wasn't a single pro or con that Phil left out. His decisions are always full of thought and his intentions are always beyond the sole purpose of "winning". I love him.
Phil managed to whittle the list down to 20 boys before he left for hockey tonight. I'm sure there will be some broken-hearted boys on campus tomorrow morning - including my own :(
These are the things that I love about Phil. He has a passion for coaching that is greater than the greatest. And it's not just his bias wife that notices. It's those 300 faces that look like they've won the lottery every time they get to be with "Coach Phil".
I love you, COACH! You rock the sports world.
Love,
Mrs. COACH
XOXO
Where we live, soccer is THE SPORT of choice. It's like hockey to Canadians - something you live, breath and dream. Every game is treated like the Champions League finals (this includes P.E. scrimmages and recess intramurals) and the boys get extremely invested in the match whether they are a player or a fan. It's also BIG TIME MAGIC, that black and white ball - a fixer of LIFE. We're talking academic improvements and spontaneous recoveries from "serious" injuries. Mmmm hmm.....many-a-broken legs, asthma attacks, and sprained ankles have been instantaneously cured through the arrival of a soccer ball ;)
Phil hasn't coached soccer since our first year here. Instead, he's been focusing on Varsity and Junior Varsity basketball and has created a program that rivals that of the football program (and actually wins the interest of most students in high school). The middle schoolers, however, still enjoy this favourite game of the nation and so making the U14 soccer team is a MAJOR DEAL. When they found out that Phil would be coaching the team this year, they were eager to prove themselves in P.E. by showing persistence and hard work during the fitness blasts and activities. It creates a minor (ha!) problem when you have an entire middle school trying out for a team with only 16 spots.....
Here he is after school today, making revisions to "THE list" (keep in mind that he has made a billion drafts of this list and that he started these drafts LAST YEAR when he found out he would be coaching the team):
I suggested that he should keep everyone, but as you can tell he ignored my opinion and stuck with his gal that understood the tough decisions that laid ahead....(check out that "Daddy, I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND YOUR TROUBLES" face)!!!!! Ahhh, these two were like two peas in a pod after school.
Back to Phil. Being the best coach ever. If only you were here to see how sick-to-his-stomach this entire process was. Cutting it down to SIXTEEN boys.....when you have an endless squad of impressive kids - all giving their absolute best effort. Gosh. His mind was racing as he considered every angle possible - grades, behaviour, improvement, dedication, family relations, etc. There were kids with low grades that he wanted to motivate. There were kids with poor behaviour that he wanted to inspire. There were kids who went to summer soccer camp and had improved significantly. There were younger brothers that were more skilled than their older brothers, but was it really going to be okay to cut one and not the other? How about the triplets? You can't just keep one. And then there are the kids that are just amazing kids - good students with kind hearts. BAH. Put in an impossible situation, there wasn't a single pro or con that Phil left out. His decisions are always full of thought and his intentions are always beyond the sole purpose of "winning". I love him.
Phil managed to whittle the list down to 20 boys before he left for hockey tonight. I'm sure there will be some broken-hearted boys on campus tomorrow morning - including my own :(
These are the things that I love about Phil. He has a passion for coaching that is greater than the greatest. And it's not just his bias wife that notices. It's those 300 faces that look like they've won the lottery every time they get to be with "Coach Phil".
I love you, COACH! You rock the sports world.
Love,
Mrs. COACH
XOXO
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