First Coaching Matches A Success!

[medpbuch 0]

Hey all, my 6th graders had their first games this morning. We have 30 girls on our team and two coaches. It was decided that we would only do Intramurals this year (not my decision). We broke the girls into four different teams. We came up with four team names and put cards with those names in a hat. Then each girl chose a card without knowing what was on it. My co-coach and I did the same thing. This way, no parents can come up after the match and say "Why did you put 'Sally Jo' on that team? She's much better than 'Jeanie Jo'"? Ridiculous that we had to worry about that, but we did.

Anyway, we played two full matches of two out of three games to 15. Earlier I had posted about 6th grade (11-12 yr olds) serving overhand. We did the toss over the net to determine if they could make it but some of the girls just demanded they could serve overhand. Well, for the game, my co-coach and I over ruled them and EVERYONE served underhand. It worked out okay. We've got some really little girls, who we allowed to move up to to about the 15 ft. line. The two highlights of the two matches were two different little girls who could not even come close to serving it underhand each made it over the net. The second one actually served out the match point. This girl is really short and wears hearing aids and I wanted her to take something positive out of the match. Well, serving match point definitely did that for her!

It certainly wasn't "pretty" volleyball and they only really set up a bump/ set/ spike a few times. But they tried and they talked and they encouraged each other and they even hit the floor going after some balls. We were really proud of them. We made the two teams that weren't playing at the time shag balls during warm ups for the other teams and also sit behind the bench and cheer them on. So, all in all, it was a good morning. Thanks for letting me share.

Mary Ellen

[fmfjohn 0]

Mary Ellen,

That is so cool!! And knowing that age group, I'll bet that the success of those two girls was shared by the whole group and made the entire day a huge success.

Congradulations (and thanks for sharing it with us - we sometimes get so caught up in our teams that we forget how much fun it starts out being!)

john

[Connie 0]

Congatulations on the great job with the girls. I am sure they are all excited about their success. I also think it is so cool when the littlest ones are successful at even the littlest things and their face light up. That is what makes coaching all worth it.

[Bert 0]

Yes, this is great. Of course it's not perfect, but who cares? The rest is for later! Go on and share us you're experience. I like to here it very much.

Bert