Sporting Challenges

For the last few weeks, I have been managing an after-school soccer program for high school kids. It is open to girls and boys, but ends up being only boys. The numbers fluctuate every day from 10 kids to 20 kids. The first few weeks, I was actually coaching, but now we are experimenting with a coaching development program in which we use young players, age 19-25, and slowly train and develop them into coaches. One of the major social challenges young people face here is unemployment. Most kids finish secondary school and even attend community college, but after that, it is extremely difficult to find employment so there is a huge section of young people who are just idle. We are trying to develop ways in which some of these young people can be trained in coaching and can somehow gain employment as a coach in youth programs. So the new coach I am working with is 20 and has played soccer for a long time, but these last two weeks have been his first times coaching.

I notice many cultural differences between the US and here. Many of the same differences I observed in Kenya. There is a sort of "don't speak unless spoken to" culture that exists and is fostered by the education system. Most schools do not encourage students to be outgoing or engaging, but instead promote attentive listening, discipline and intense academic standards. Many of these kids do not have outlets to display their emotion or to enjoy themselves as kids. A sports environment is one place in which this could possibly happen, but again, most coaches here also promote repetition and discipline. We are trying to provide an environment for these kids to learn, but to also have fun in a reliable and consistent setting, which is a rare scenario here. One example of the difference in coaching or teaching styles is the fact that the young coach I am helping to trained told me that sometimes when I coach I make the kids feel awkward because I am always saying "please." I thought this was so interesting because first of all, I don't even realize that I'm saying please, but if I'm asking a kid to go pick up the cones or to get in line or to listen, I would always preface the request with "please." While the culture here is to be very polite to teachers (the kids answer every single thing I say with "Yes, miss"), it is not often that the person in an authority position is nice back to them. So the coach was saying that when I say please, it makes it seem like I am putting myself below the players. Interesting cultural difference to me, since I would think it would be disrespectful to NOT say please and they see it as a sign of weakness.

Overall the program is going well and I am learning more and more every day about coaching, working with kids, how to tailor my approach to certain individuals, how to control my own anger when these kids are disrespectful and don't listen, which is basically every day! We are working on developing a curriculum for a coaching vocational training course, which would be a really great project here. This whole process gives me such a different perspective on coaches and really makes me appreciate all the good coaches out there. It is such a hard thing to understand if you are only a player, but once you are on the other side of the situation, it's a whole other world.