Kid's sports - Revenge of the Coaches

[lookout123]

So it begins. Wednesday night I had the opportunity to evaluate the soccer skills of 73 children between the ages of 5-8 years old. Many I knew, many are new.

I was well aware that the general consensus was that I had a stacked team last session so we would destroy the competition. Nobody thought that when teams were picked, but they did by the end of the session. I was told this time we were going to break all the teams up and start over from scratch rather than filling our losses in with players who were new. There are 3 coaches returning and 3 who are brand new guys I've never met before. One of them I'm certain will be a lifelong friend. I knew that from the minute I met him and he gave me a crushing handshake, started juggling a soccer ball, and telling me about all of the Championship teams he's coached for other clubs. BFF, I tell ya.

After two hours of evaluating kids all the coaches sat down with their notes and a huge whiteboard. I sat quietly while R, a returning coach wrote each of our team names on the board then announced he wanted all of his returning kids back. No objections, so he wrote all their names under his team. M made the same statement, so they wrote all appropriate names under her team. They all looked at me expecting the same and I just plainly said I knew there was bitching about my team last time. Two of my stronger players moved up to the next age group so they were out of play. I told them to just write Lil Lookout and B under my team name and then I'll be in the round robin picking for the rest of my team. They all quickly agreed so we started the round robin.

Each kid had been assigned a mutually agreed upon score from 1 to 5, 5 being the bee's knees of skill level. The plan was to go round the table and pick players from highest skill level til they were gone. R's team already had two 5's, and I had Lil Lookout as a 5, so we were out. The other coaches took the remaining 5's at two per team. Then the same with 4's. I had B so I was out. They didn't let me have my next pick from the 4's because he was on my team before and another coach really wanted him. So after all the 5's and 4's are gone I have LL and B and the other coaches have 4/5 of their players filled.

We followed the same process for the 3's, 2's, and were just going through the ones when someone looked up and noticed that everyone who was on my team was a returning player from my last team and that is when the argument started. The two coaches who had kept their teams together just sat quietly while the other 3 coaches and director got on my case about stacking my team. I let them go and go until finally it got quiet and I asked them who was the last coach who got to pick in each round. It was me. How many players did we pick each round? One. How many rounds have we gone? 7. How many of you picked ANY of my returning players when they were sitting in the open pool? ZERO. They argued a bit more but the director finally got my point - Those coaches didn't rate any of my players highly enough to actually pick them for their teams. If my players were so vastly superior in skill, why didn't they pick them? I followed the rules and picked players just like they did - but I rated these kids highly enough to bring back even the one who everybody laughed about because his skill level is a -.5 on a 1-5 scale. Discussion ended there. One of the new coaches - my BFF, of course, was still bent out of shape saying I was still going to run the league and it wasn't fair. I was annoyed and tired as we'd now been picking teams for two hours. I had all the players I specifically wanted (just my returning kids minus one) so I just told them they could assign the rest of my players and I'll take what I get without complaint. They all smirked and agreed as I left.

I got my team sheet today and I have 12 players. That means that if everyone shows up, no player will spend more than half the game on the field - including LL and B. The other players that they assigned me after I left were all of the kids who didn't show up for evaluations. They could be 1's, they could be 5's. All we know is they've never played at our club before. History tells us they're usually 1's. My team has 7 boys and 5 girls with a combine point total of 27 as the unknowns are ranked as 1's. The average point total for the other teams is 37.

Eh, that's cool. I've started from scratch before so I don't mind that, I just hate that I've got so many players that the playing time could be limited. Oh well, we'll see what happens come Wednesday for the first practice.

Team Record: 0-0-0