Thank Heaven for Little Girls
... But not in the way that the song is, because that would be a little bit creepy I think.
There's something absolutely delightful about coaching a kid who is talented, driven, and respects you. Or even just the last two, to be quite honest. But the fact that I can help someone to do something incredibly terrifying and difficult - and to do it well, beautifully, and without any pain - is something that keeps me going, keeps me waking up at 6:30 to dive in the morning and keeps me cheerful until my coaching job is done at seven, or eight, at night. Because when Catelyn Koff learns an inward flip and a reverse dive in one practice, and is making jokes about the look on Cara's face, life is good, no matter how tired I am.
Or, better yet, when Sandra and Cara see Catelyn's beautiful back dive in warmups for the meet, and stare at me as if asking "Did you do that?" That makes up for all the petty jabs, all the "Well, Elizabeth and I are assistant coaches but she's just helping out, I'm the real one, see," and the "She's the inexperienced one" and the not keeping me in the loop about pep rallys and meet locations and who we are choosing for diver of the week.
Or when Nate actually practices instead of just standing around and talking about it, and finally starts learning new dives again, doing a fairly good back flip straight that no one has been able to convince him to do since he clashed with one winter coach. Or when Nora Manzella follows me around smiling because I finally got her to do her front dive, and her back dive, and now she feels competent. Or even when Gus looked at me in astonishment when I proclaimed that yes, I know what happened on his front dive, and that he knew what he was supposed to do but just freaked out, and that we could fix it for the next meet - rather than giving him the same worn out platitudes that you have to listen to the dive being announced and pay attention to what you're supposed to be doing. And to think that at the beginning of the year we clashed and I thought I couldn't handle him.
And the best moment of the summer so far was when I was standing on the board, getting ready to do a reverse dive at the first home meet, and Ethan yelled "Go Liz!" from the other side of the pool, his head barely visible above the water. The second best moment probably being seeing him do a beautiful back dive for the meet, or possibly when he came to afternoon practice and wanted to show me specifically his back dive and inward.
Small children are absolutely adorable. They make life good. I wonder if there is a summer league in Chicago that I could coach for next summer. That would be nice.
And, unexpectedly, the best descriptor of my mood out of all those adjectives is a nice, round, simplistic "happy". But that's a good way to be, I suppose.
There's something absolutely delightful about coaching a kid who is talented, driven, and respects you. Or even just the last two, to be quite honest. But the fact that I can help someone to do something incredibly terrifying and difficult - and to do it well, beautifully, and without any pain - is something that keeps me going, keeps me waking up at 6:30 to dive in the morning and keeps me cheerful until my coaching job is done at seven, or eight, at night. Because when Catelyn Koff learns an inward flip and a reverse dive in one practice, and is making jokes about the look on Cara's face, life is good, no matter how tired I am.
Or, better yet, when Sandra and Cara see Catelyn's beautiful back dive in warmups for the meet, and stare at me as if asking "Did you do that?" That makes up for all the petty jabs, all the "Well, Elizabeth and I are assistant coaches but she's just helping out, I'm the real one, see," and the "She's the inexperienced one" and the not keeping me in the loop about pep rallys and meet locations and who we are choosing for diver of the week.
Or when Nate actually practices instead of just standing around and talking about it, and finally starts learning new dives again, doing a fairly good back flip straight that no one has been able to convince him to do since he clashed with one winter coach. Or when Nora Manzella follows me around smiling because I finally got her to do her front dive, and her back dive, and now she feels competent. Or even when Gus looked at me in astonishment when I proclaimed that yes, I know what happened on his front dive, and that he knew what he was supposed to do but just freaked out, and that we could fix it for the next meet - rather than giving him the same worn out platitudes that you have to listen to the dive being announced and pay attention to what you're supposed to be doing. And to think that at the beginning of the year we clashed and I thought I couldn't handle him.
And the best moment of the summer so far was when I was standing on the board, getting ready to do a reverse dive at the first home meet, and Ethan yelled "Go Liz!" from the other side of the pool, his head barely visible above the water. The second best moment probably being seeing him do a beautiful back dive for the meet, or possibly when he came to afternoon practice and wanted to show me specifically his back dive and inward.
Small children are absolutely adorable. They make life good. I wonder if there is a summer league in Chicago that I could coach for next summer. That would be nice.
And, unexpectedly, the best descriptor of my mood out of all those adjectives is a nice, round, simplistic "happy". But that's a good way to be, I suppose.