Growing a tree
My two current annoyances, aside from still interviewing for coaching jobs are as follows:
1. The new YouTube setup. Fancy, functional, but why did they go and bury some of the easier menu items such as finding my own channel?
2. My Gatorade water bottle lid slowly losing it's ability to remain a lid. I shouldn't be surprised given that this water bottle has been well loved, and has traveled from Anchorage, to San Diego, to Florida, and Ohio, and across Oregon. It currently has three holes in it - bandaged up with electrical tape - and will probably spring a fourth shortly. It might be time to retire it, but it's easily packable, it carries a substantial amount of water - 34 ounces - and...yea it probably needs to be replaced.
Also, don't bother looking for my YouTube channel. It is not exciting in it's current state, has very few videos up - of course they're all rowing related - and most likely will never become a YouTube sensation.
Despite my personal setbacks with job hunting, and water bottles, this has also been an exciting summer. A friend of mine is getting into coaching.
Wait, let me back up, and start over here.
Parents: Do NOT let your children become coaches. The hours are long, the pay is short, the jobs are difficult to come by, you move everywhere at the drop of a hat, it's brutal on relationships, and friendships, and a myriad of other reasons.
So a friend of mine is becoming a novice coach. He's switching sides of the desk this year, and is heading into the unknown. When he informed me of this change of pace, it took me a couple of minutes to stop laughing. Once I assured him that I wasn't laughing at him in particular, but that someone else was joining our side, and was about to experience what I've experienced, we chatted about what your first year is like, and I gave him two of my best coaching tips.
1. The season is long, so take the time to do things right the first time. Never teach something that you have to unteach later.
2. Don't overcomplicate the process. It's easy to want to do everything under the sun, and to jump from point to point during a practice. Slow down, take your time, and understand that vanilla works for a reason.
This is the third friend of mine who has gone into coaching, and I'm slowly starting to build my coaching tree. A friend, and former athlete just took the assistant job at a D1, and I'm excited to see what she can do. She's leaving a solid program a bit short on support and funding, and I'm hoping that her new job is able to give her access to resources previously unavailable.
I know many people will tell you that it's what you put in rather than what you have, but that only works when you're on equal footing. I could work extremely hard at a DIII school, but I'm never going to upset the top V8 from UW, or the JV8, or even the top 3V8/N8.
Perspective.
The first time I found out my tree was starting to grow, it freaked me out. I remember the day clearly, riding in a launch in Portland, talking about a former athlete who was doing excellent work for her club program back east, and hearing a coach say, "Oh I know that person. I didn't know you coached them."
Terrifying. About as terrifying as hearing from a friend who was at Duke that they'd run into someone who was coached by me. Wow the world gets very small, very fast.
But I'm excited now. I feel like I'm that middle transition where I'm not old enough to be an, "old hand," but I'm no longer the youngest generation of coaches. Ah time, and it's way of marching on.
1. The new YouTube setup. Fancy, functional, but why did they go and bury some of the easier menu items such as finding my own channel?
2. My Gatorade water bottle lid slowly losing it's ability to remain a lid. I shouldn't be surprised given that this water bottle has been well loved, and has traveled from Anchorage, to San Diego, to Florida, and Ohio, and across Oregon. It currently has three holes in it - bandaged up with electrical tape - and will probably spring a fourth shortly. It might be time to retire it, but it's easily packable, it carries a substantial amount of water - 34 ounces - and...yea it probably needs to be replaced.
Also, don't bother looking for my YouTube channel. It is not exciting in it's current state, has very few videos up - of course they're all rowing related - and most likely will never become a YouTube sensation.
Despite my personal setbacks with job hunting, and water bottles, this has also been an exciting summer. A friend of mine is getting into coaching.
Wait, let me back up, and start over here.
Parents: Do NOT let your children become coaches. The hours are long, the pay is short, the jobs are difficult to come by, you move everywhere at the drop of a hat, it's brutal on relationships, and friendships, and a myriad of other reasons.
So a friend of mine is becoming a novice coach. He's switching sides of the desk this year, and is heading into the unknown. When he informed me of this change of pace, it took me a couple of minutes to stop laughing. Once I assured him that I wasn't laughing at him in particular, but that someone else was joining our side, and was about to experience what I've experienced, we chatted about what your first year is like, and I gave him two of my best coaching tips.
1. The season is long, so take the time to do things right the first time. Never teach something that you have to unteach later.
2. Don't overcomplicate the process. It's easy to want to do everything under the sun, and to jump from point to point during a practice. Slow down, take your time, and understand that vanilla works for a reason.
This is the third friend of mine who has gone into coaching, and I'm slowly starting to build my coaching tree. A friend, and former athlete just took the assistant job at a D1, and I'm excited to see what she can do. She's leaving a solid program a bit short on support and funding, and I'm hoping that her new job is able to give her access to resources previously unavailable.
I know many people will tell you that it's what you put in rather than what you have, but that only works when you're on equal footing. I could work extremely hard at a DIII school, but I'm never going to upset the top V8 from UW, or the JV8, or even the top 3V8/N8.
Perspective.
The first time I found out my tree was starting to grow, it freaked me out. I remember the day clearly, riding in a launch in Portland, talking about a former athlete who was doing excellent work for her club program back east, and hearing a coach say, "Oh I know that person. I didn't know you coached them."
Terrifying. About as terrifying as hearing from a friend who was at Duke that they'd run into someone who was coached by me. Wow the world gets very small, very fast.
But I'm excited now. I feel like I'm that middle transition where I'm not old enough to be an, "old hand," but I'm no longer the youngest generation of coaches. Ah time, and it's way of marching on.
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