So here's my dilemma, my 5 year old son's soccer team is a train wreck and needs help. It started off as a mess from the very beginning when the Director of the league died. The league was in disarray and so the coach of my son's team didn't communicate with the team until days before the first game (his first mistake). After the first practice, which was the day before the first game, I knew we were in trouble. The league was supposed to be for 5-7 year olds. We only had 7 kids and all but 2 of them were 5 or younger. Almost all of the kids had never played soccer before and some of them had never even played any outside activity. The coach, who speaks broken English with a Spanish accent, doesn't have a clue and it looks like the only reason that he decided to coach was because he wanted his son to play more.
The first game is played and our team gets very lucky. They don't have any kids under 6, but they are short a couple of players. The opposing coach lets us use all of our 7 against their 5. We still only manage 3 goals to their 6.
The next practice comes the following week and this is when I start to see that the head coach is
completely clueless. He doesn't have any drills ready and barely knows how to do a couple of warm up exercises.
This is when I decided to step in. Looking back it probably was a mistake. I should have just keep my mouth shut like the rest of the Soccer Moms on the sidelines, but I had to offer up my 2 cents (
for future reference, I also ate paste when I was a kid). The thing is, I had never coached myself and found that I couldn't remember any specific drills to work on (
it would have helped if I knew I was going to have to help out). Anyway, I offered to help him keep the kids under control. At this point they were playing pile on, and the kid at the bottom was three shades of green. I somehow manage to get their attention and we finished up the practice on a high note.
At the next game the head coach asks me if I can organize the kids while he pretends to be talking to parents about important things. I don't know if he's scared or worried that the parents will yell at him for doing something wrong or if he just doesn't know what the hell he's doing. I do my best to prepare the kids but they proceed to get annihilated by a much bigger and older team. This is when I find out from the coach that there is only four other teams and they are all stacked. It seems that when the Director passed away the rest of the coaches decided to build dynasty teams, or teams that had all of the older more experienced kids on them.
Nice! We got the left overs.
The next practice comes and the coach still has nothing prepared. He tells the kids we are going to have a scrimmage. Except only 4 kids have shown up and no one is listening to him. I tell him I will run a drill that the kids will like and keep them entertained (
Red Light, Green Light).
It's not much but the kids seemed to be having fun and none of the kids are beating on each other although my son isn't really paying attention. (
note: my son plays soccer well but doesn't take coaching tips from me because I'm his "Dad" not his "Coach") I run a couple more drills until the rest of the kids show up and then the coach says, "
O.K. it's scrimmage time". What the f**k dude? I don't want to steal this guy's cool-aid, but come on. I close my mouth and act like he knows what he's doing. At the end of practice I tell him to call the league and find out what's going on.
The third game comes and mysteriously 2 new kids show up. It's pretty much like the movie "
Kicking and Screaming" with Will Ferrell only that the kids really aren't any good. I think that the coach thought that these kids could help out because they were older, but they just make the substitution part of the game even worse. This is the game when the opposing coach doesn't pull any of his older kids and we get pulverized 20-0 (
no joke). At the end of the game I tell him that he should have taken some kids out and he says that it wouldn't have been fair to his kids. (
now I'm in Bizzaro World). This is when I tell my wife that we should just quit the league, but later after we calm down we decide that it's only the spring league and
it's just for fun.
This leads me to the present day and my dilemma. We were going to call the new Director to tell him the issue, but they took the numbers off of the website (
smart). We have emailed them with no response. Should I let my son continue the league and chalk it up to experience, even though he isn't learning anything new from this guy and he doesn't listen when I coach him? If so, should I continue to help coach? I just don't know.
My top 10 soccer/football players in the world (right now):
