Thursday, September 08, 2005

Big Weekend Upcoming

This weekend is opening day for the local soccer season. With all of my high school (none) and college experience (none) I find myself the coach of an 8 year old girls team. We've had a pretty good team the last couple of years, notwithstanding the coaching. My coaching philosophy is to try and influence the play on the field (excuse me, the pitch) through extrememly loud constant yelling.

Occasionally this works. Occasionally it makes the girls cry. Frequently it makes me hoarse. I haven't found any other theories yet that work better. Of course we practice stuff, but that never seems to make it to the actual game.

I am trying one new innovation this year. Since most of the good soccer is played by teams that speak Spanish, I now communicate my shouted instructions in Spanish. I told the girls it sounds more like real soccer, and maybe it would intimidate other teams that didn't speak Spanish. So now I scream "UNDULAY UNDULAY, CRUSA CRUSA!" from the sidelines and they ignore me in two languages.

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