Friday, July 3/2015
So last night was one of those double duty nights that I think are going to be the norm for me this summer in that both my kids had a game at the same time. Now my ex and I have worked out a system so that one of us is at each kids game showing our support. Sometimes we get lucky, not that kind of lucky as we are just friends now so get your mind out of the gutter, and my son's game will be at 6:30 and my daughter will play at 8:30 so we can actually see both of them play.
Last night wasn't one of those nights as they both played at roughly the same time and since it is my free week custody wise I was going to see my daughter play out near Mooney's Bay. My daughter is a very competitive, wonder where she gets that from lol, and weeks I don't see her play at least one of her games, she plays for two different teams in different leagues, leaves her feeling out of sorts and moody so I do my best to catch at least one.
As I was driving to her game I was getting texts from my ex saying the head coach for my son's team wasn't at the field and since I'm an assistant coach for the team she wondered if I knew if he was going to be there or not. I pulled over, safety first, and texted back that I'd sent him my notes on Tuesday's 2-2 draw and reminded him I wasn't going to the Thursday game in order to watch my daughters game and he hadn't said he wasn't available for the game. I asked if the team manager had printed both his name and mine on the game sheets, she checked and said the manager told her she was always printing my name on them as this isn't the first time our HC has been a no show, not told anyone what is going on, or been late. It was now 15 minutes to game time and if I turned around right now I could be there just in time so I asked her what she thought, telling her I was kind of disposed to not going to his game and letting the club deal with this issue as there have been a lot of rumblings from the parents about the lack of coaching the team is getting, not for lack of effort on my part but it's hard to do things when the HC shows up and changes everything at the last minute.
She said no, continue onto the daughters game and she'd keep me posted. As I drove into the parking lot at the soccer pitch she sent me another text saying the boys were playing but without any coach as the team manager was trying to work things out but was really pissed off as she wasn't qualified to coach a representative team. I called my ex as I walked to the field, waving at my daughter as she was warming up, and told her the game wasn't legal and I was shocked the referee actually let them play as the rules state there as to be a coach on the sidelines. I told her I was going to talk to the head coach for the club itself as this has been going on for far too long and we didn't move him to this club to end up with a wasted season without any coaching. She said there were several parents planning on doing that as well and maybe the groundswell would see some changes, she hesitated and asked me if I'd be OK coaching his team full time as the head coach as my name was being mentioned by a lot of the parents and I said I would step up as this team has great potential and at least that way we would know our son was actually going to learn this summer.
We hung up and I watched my daughters game, she played awesome as she was playing her more natural position of outside midfielder versus the back line where she has been the last few games covering off for some injuries. My ex texted me the running score of our sons game and let me know the HC showed up just before halftime with some kind of excuse about going to our home field, that didn't fly as he had sent emails to the team reminding them it was an away game.......
My daughters team ended up winning 2-0 in a real physical battle and I was relieved she didn't get a yellow card as she isn't the kind of player to let anyone foul her over and over, goes back to that competitive nature she has. My son's team won 4-3 but from the texts I was getting on their drive home he wasn't too happy with things. When I got home I spoke with him briefly about it and could clearly hear in his voice that he was fighting back some tears. Seems all he got was criticism for not controlling the ball and shooting enough, yet according to his mom he'd made the pass that led to 3 of the 4 goals scored. I told him to relax and he wasn't going to the Friday practice while I sorted things out.
After we hung up I thought how best to deal with the situation and remembered when I had parents mad at me when I was a head coach, usually because their precious child wasn't playing as much as they thought they should or the position they wanted, both playing time and formations are a coaches decision, especially at the rep level.
So I did something I've never done before and wrote a letter outlining all the shortcomings from our coach beginning with the lack of practices, the two weeks he was off the radar and left me to deal with the team, and suggested the CHC might find it beneficial to have a dialogue with some of the parents in order to get a better understanding of the situation and mounting frustrations.
I've not heard anything back yet but since this is my custody week you know I'll be at Tuesday's practice as well as standing on the teams sideline at Thursday's game. Might be time I put on my big boy pants and shake things up a bit.
Might be an interesting week soccer wise for me :)
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