Can barely contain my anger this morning. Receive an email from the league reminding me that the next set of games will be part of an atrocity called ‘Players Weekend.’ At first, I think it’s one of those joke chain mails until I read a little closer. Apparently, the head honchos have seriously decreed that for one Saturday each season, the coaches should not coach. At all. Instead, they should suffer in silence and, as they so quaintly put it, ‘refrain from the constant barrage of instruction.’
I can’t believe what I’m reading. They expect the kids to think for themselves out there. To problem-solve without our help? To talk more to each other? And they demand adults only applaud and never instruct. Even the parents are ordered to obey this very obviously fascist directive. Come on, have any of these people ever been in charge of a team? How are we supposed to coach without shouting? The players won’t know what to do without the constant soundtrack of people like me droning on.
More importantly, what am I supposed to do to counter this? It’s too late to learn sign language before the match. And the kids wouldn’t understand it anyway. I guess I’m going to have to just stand there, watch mistake after mistake, and not even get the satisfaction of roaring criticism at the kids. This is not what I signed up as a coach to do. The more I think on this the more I realize it’s positively un-American. I mean, when did all this become solely about the players?
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