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"But,"
she protested with a plaintive cry, "I don’t want
to play de-fense. I want to play for-ward. De-fense is boring,"
the youngster wailed, her blonde pigtails wagging vigorously.
What
am I the coach of eight and nine-year old girls to do?
In
my career I deal with many senior managers, men and women responsible
for billions on the balance sheet and thousands of employees in
the workplace.
I
may know a couple of things about navigating the corridors of corporate
power, but I know full well it doesn’t amount to a handful
of Oreos and glass of cold milk when it comes to coaching kids.
After eight years of coaching youth sports, take it from me, corporate
savvy and soccer savvy are worlds apart.
So,
appealing to the young lady’s higher sense, I said: "Brianna"—not
her real name for fear of retribution from some higher court when
I am in my seventies—"the team needs you to play
defense."
"Morgan,
doesn’t play defense," Brianna interrupted, revealing
the gap between her widely-spaced big teeth.
Correct.
Morgan—again name changed to protect my old age--is our star
forward, the trouper with legs of a gazelle and the footwork of
angels who can sneak past opponents as if they were standing still.
Morgan puts points on the board; I don’t want her playing defense.
I need her little cannon foot to rocket the ball into the goal.
So
I responded by lecturing, "Brianna, defenders are integral
to our strategy"…But then, I caught myself in mid-thought
with the realization that words like "integral" and "strategy"
may ring bells with CEOs but are as meaningless as crushed crayons
to a nine-year old.
What
does it matter really? Sure, I want to score points.
Sure, I want to win, but what I think is unimportant.
What matters is what our girls learn. They need to discover how
to play to play together as a unit… to share the experience
of working together… and to feel what it takes to strive for
something and attain it.
Offense,
defense… who cares? When you’re nine, what matters is
playing the game. So when I started to speak again, Brianna
cut me off with a bright, "Okay," as she turned and ran
out onto the mud-pocked field saying "I don’t like all
that running that forwards do anyway."
You
know, I don’t like all that running around either. And isn’t
that a good lesson to learn when you’re nine?
So
let the kids play, I say. There is time enough for all that "running
around" stuff later.
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