Doing most important things in most important ways.
Good things are afoot at the Jank house. Good things that hopefully will spread Jon’s way after his recent brushes with worry. Although, historically, things going as well as they have been usually is followed up by something on the magnitude of a comet crashing into the ocean. Though, Jon, they’re backing away from the Frenchman’s claim.
Because of a fiercely busy week, I haven’t run/biked/swam since last Friday. I managed to squeeze in 5.2 Thursday at lunch, in a pleasant 46 minutes, on a day that was made for runners – brilliant blue, gentle breeze, and about 60 degrees. Awesome. I should try it again sometime.
In other news, I’m coaching Jake’s t-ball team. Not that I volunteered to coach – on the form, I clearly checked the “I’ll help with the team” box, not the “I want to be a coach” box. Let’s be honest here – learning baseball from me is about as useful for the kids as learning, oh, say, FLYING by flapping one’s arms from me. I still close my eyes and cringe when catching pop flies.
On the plus side, it’s t-ball, so if I can manage to get a majority of the kids not playing in the dirt for the majority of the time, I’ll count it as a win. Truthfully, I think I’m looking forward to coaching. Nothing better than a chance to mold young minds. I think we’ll all run the bases for the first practice. Spend an hour learning running skillz…
The worst part, personally, has been calling the parents of the kids to let them know about practices, schedules, etc. Not that the other parents aren’t wonderful – they have all been swell, and last year there weren’t any of those parents at any of the T-ball games. Good folks in this town.
It’s just the whole cold-calling thing. I hate it. Absolutely hate getting on the phone with people I do not know, and who may not be expecting me to call. Irrational? Sure. Lazy? You bet. But it still bugs the crap out of me. The upside is that it’s done now. There’s just a couple of stragglers who haven’t returned calls – we’ll see if they show up on Saturday.
Which was the other part that I had irrational issues with. I called the league commissioner (which was somewhat easier – he goes to our church, and we gabbed on Sunday) this week to see about practices, etc. He says “Sure, you tell me when and where.” I say “Well, what’s available?” He says “Whatever!” So it was up to me to figure out when and where, which was tough, since I didn’t have any idea at that point what the other parents could support.
Until I remembered that I was the coach. Once that clicked, it was easy to make arbitrary decisions. Bringing to mind the great rules of leadership. Brogan posted it as four rules a while back. I can distill it down to two:
1. The best plan is the one that you begin executing
2. The information you have now is adequate to start executing, provided you’re willing to shift as information shifts
Once i realized I was at step one, the rest was easy. We’ll reassess schedules for the rest of the season on Saturday.
That’s pretty much it. I’m off to read about music theory until I fall asleep.
You will be a great coach! I can picture you out there with all those rug rats:) They are such fun–and you’ll have a blast, I’m sure.
The “Helping with the Team” box is a tricky way of snagging reluctant coaches. My husband should know – he’s “helped coach” a few times. Last year due to his shift work he claimed “Equipment Manager” and it’s been working pretty well for him.
Sounds like you need a “team manager”. One of those moms/parents who enjoys having everyone’s phone numbers and e-mails and calls around every time you have an announcement.
Basically these days my son’s U14 soccer teams survive on big group e-mails (except last night, when we couldn’t find his game…)
if you’re brave enough to check any of those boxes, more power to you. the kids will have fun either way.
T-ball is easy, Jank. You’ll spend most of the time just trying to keep the kids in the outfield from sitting down and playing with the grass. We had out games right next to a small cimuter airport. Every 5 minutes a tiny Cessna-sized plane flew right over the field. Distraction city. But lots of fun. For some kids, its the first time they’ve even held a bat so anything that happens (aside from injuries) is a good thing.
And a collective sigh from this end about the comet thing. Whew!
Oh yeah, and Chris Brogan totally rocks for lines like that.
Good luck Coach Jank!
You’d be an awesome coach!
What lucky kids! I had the same experience with checking off the “I’d like to help out and support the team” box in my son’s first year of soccer … thinking I’d slice some oranges or something! :)
Good luck coaching! :)