Rough Around The Edges But A Heart Of Marshmallow

Thing One and Petunia share a soccer coach.  To say that he is blunt would be an understatement of epic proportions: he's one of those inherently loud Northeasterners (originally from the NYC area, I would guess, based on his choices in sports teams) who speaks his mind in no uncertain terms and often in profanity-laden ones, depending on his audience.  Having seen the man coach teenaged boys first, I was more than a little dubious about how that would translate to my ten year-old daughter, but fortunately he is able to filter himself around the girls.  As a coach, he is a yeller, albeit one every bit as quick to yell praise as criticism.  Petunia was terrified of him until she got used to his decibel level, but her first choice for next year is his team, if that tells you anything about the turnaround in her opinion of him.

Anyway, this evening there was a tryout for his team.  I was running back and forth between three fields between the three kids, so I didn't get to watch as much of the tryout as I would have liked, but Petunia seemed to be doing an awful lot of sitting on the sideline and was looking rather forlorn as a result.  After a while, he called her over to him and they had one of those conversations between a coach and a player that you sometimes see on the sidelines of a televised football game, where the coach is holding a clipboard in front of his face so you can't read his lips.  After a minute or two, she nodded and then he told her to grab a pinney and sent her into the game.  I asked her about that in the car on the way home.  She said that he called her over to reassure her that she wasn't playing much because they already knew that she was going to make the team and there were other players he needed to look at more.  Clearly he understands how hard she is on herself, and he both noticed her mood and took the time to make her feel better in the middle of a busy tryout.

Strangely enough, he had a very similar interaction with Thing One last weekend, adjusted for age and gender.  Thing One is one of those kids who takes his job on the field very seriously.  Whenever he's pulled out of a game, if there's any question at all about it, the first thing he does is ask the coach if he did something wrong.  It's actually become kind of a running joke with the coaches although they do legitimately appreciate that he's asking because he wants to get it right the next time.  The boys had two games last weekend, a regular league game on Saturday and a huge State Cup game on Sunday.  Before the Saturday game, the coaches told the boys that they were trying to figure out a way to win the game while resting the starters as much as possible for Sunday, so they should be expecting some odd assignments on the field.  Thing One was one of the boys told to expect to sit more than usual.  He played most of the first half and came out just before halftime.  He didn't go back in after halftime, and seemed ok until every other boy sitting out at the time was sent back in other than him, at which point he actually started pacing up and down the sideline.

As he recounted the conversation afterward, around then this coach asked what in the world he was doing, and he asked if he was going to get back into the game.  The coach looked at him and said, "I already told you that you were going to sit more than usual today.  When there's a big game, you play every damned minute of it because we need you in there, and you know it as well as I do.  Now sit your &%$&% ass down on that bench and &%#$& REST!"

Clearly, his internal marshmallow takes different forms with ten year-old girls and fourteen year-old boys, but no doubt it's there in both cases.  The man cares deeply about the kids he coaches and both of my kids are fortunate to have him training them.  My daughter is also fortunate that he has that filter!