Life at Stony Brook outside the classroom is no less busy. Since I’m helping to coach soccer, every day I’m either assisting with a practice or I’m driving one of two mini-buses with half the team to take them to an away game (which is fun to do). One thing I learned very quickly is that coaching soccer is vastly different from playing soccer. Learning to coach has been (and is) a huge learning curve for me, but I think I am learning and am enjoying it (though at least not yet as much as I enjoy playing).
I think coaching is more like chess and farming. Farming because it takes a lot of care, patience, and skill to develop the physical and mental skills of the game, just as I imagine it does to produce a crop of grain, for instance. Coaching is like chess because it is very much a strategic thinking game: what are the skills of the players, how can these best fit together to create an effective offense and defense, how to we out maneuver our opponents, etc. It’s certainly a lot to learn and interesting.
It has also been a lot of fun to assist the head coach, Johnny Whallon. He’s actually about a month younger than me and is a very good coach, at least in my opinion. We get along well and it’s been fun to watch him and learn from him and talk with him about soccer and the team. There are also two other assistant coaches–one that has been coaching (at least some sport) for decades, and another fellow who is an alum of Stony Brook.
So far, the team’s record is something like 4-5, and with each practice and each game the students improve their skills.
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Sounds like a great experience! How do you like working with the kids? High Schoolers?
It is a great experience, and I think I enjoy working with the students (almost all of them are in high school). I do find it hard to think of the students as high schoolers, though, because the nature of this boarding school has made them quite independent–in many ways they seem more like college students–and I have to remind myself that they’re not.
I like the analogies.
Cool! Yes, the metaphors are quite neato.
I’m so glad you’re enjoying coaching soccer!
I like your metaphors a lot. I am glad to hear that you are learning a lot and enjoying your time.