Monday, December 10, 2007

Coach for a Day

There was a mixup on Saturday at Jacob's soccer game. Someone on the team distributed a schedule that had the game at 10:30 instead of 9:20. As Jacob joined the team late, I didn't have that schedule, and instead looked on the league web site.

The kids usually have 30 minutes of practice before they start. By 9:50, however, there were only 5 or 6 of the 11 players present and none of the coaches. So your favorite blogger about life in Thailand, despite knowing virtually nothing about soccer, coached the kids.

We ended up picking up another boy who played on a different team, so we started at 6 versus 6 instead of the usual 9 versus 9. Over the courese of the game, a few more players showed up. With about five minutes left, the coach actually showed up and took over.

The kids did a great job. It was a bit sunny and warm, so the boys were pretty tired. I didn't have subs, so they all were iron men, er iron boys. I think the final score was 2-0 against them. Had they been at full strength and had a coach, I think they would have done much better.

One of the parents wasn't happy with me. When I told his son to play defense for a while, the dad yelled that his son was the only one capable of scoring and intimated I didn't know what I was doing. I told him he was welcome to take over for me if he wanted, but I took the fact that he turned and walked down the sideline for a no. I think I broke out the "Look, they are second graders." Oh well.

In fairness, most of the parents were very appreciative. I think just about everyone else thanked me for helping out.

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