A way of life

Memories from 2011. Not only a different sport, it almost feels like a different lifetime

My first year of coaching adult sports was with a women's soccer team. This was back in 2011, and so many things have changed for me since that year, but I still like to reminisce about it.

It was my first experience with the process I now know well, which revolves around helping a group of relatively athletically inexperienced adults become competitive in their sport.

One day I'll write more about that team, but my time with those ladies changed the way I looked at coaching sports teams, and definitely the way I experienced it - and it was almost impossible to step back after that. 

Not that I had much of a choice.

Soon after this experience I found myself trying to start over as a coach (and in many ways, as a person) on the other side of the ocean, where it seemed like coaching adults wasn't really in the cards for me. It took me 4 more years until I finally ended up in this new game called catchball, working with adult women again. When I first stepped onto a court as a catchball coach in 2016, I knew I had to use the experience I had, and figure out the rest as I went. 

And so I did. 

It didn't take me very long. I was never too serious as a volleyball player (always loved playing it though) or coach, and never got to complete a full-term catchball coaching certification course. However, I was already a sports coach with a good amount of experience, and I knew how to use the same basic coaching principles to teach this new game that I liked.

To this day, when I'm asked by newer catchball leaders around North America - "where can we find good coaches for this game?", I tell them to start by actually looking at COACHES. 

I've worked alongside so many different coaches over the years, and eventually realized that coaching is more than a gig. It's even more than an occupation. 

Coaching is a way of life. I got into it about 17 years ago, and though my life went through so many other changes since, I'm still doing it - and might be more committed than ever. You can say that it's the longest relationship I've ever had, after my wife of course... A person can easily switch jobs, and even a career. Changing the way you see and live your life - not as straightforward, right?

Over the years, I found that many former athletes get into coaching at some point, but few actually commit to it the way I did. It's simply a whole different ball game (please excuse the pun). 

On the other hand, very few people go into coaching without having an impressive athletic career first. But out of those few, many do go all in, and make it their way of life.

Why? Probably because it was always about coaching for them, about walking a person or a group of people through a life-changing process.

I know it was for me.

So yeah, I'm still here. And I'm not going anywhere.