with grace upon the wind

Today was my first day at the ITC. I work there tomorrow morning at 8:00. Exciting. It is kind of a good thing. I got to sit there and do my homework. Tomorrow I have some reading to do, and then I have to take a quiz on ICON. Should be doable for the two hours that I am there.

I figure that job is my beer money job. I also need to save for a Spring Break trip. I might just use the coaching job to pay for that. We'll see. I guess I'll just play it by ear. I should have enough income to have some fun along the way while saving too.

Today practice was really lethargic. The kids aren't that enthused as it is, but today was just depressing. One group I got going. I was jumping around yelling to the other coaches that I had the best group. It worked. That group just kept feeding off of it, and they got motivated and made themselves push harder. I tried to get the next group going by getting them to beat the other group. They had their flashes, but didn't have the consistency. I think I shouldn't have compared them, and tried to get them going another way. Some kids love the challenge and some don't.

I gave a closing remark after practice today saying, "Today wasn't great, but what happened today is done. You can't get that back. The only thing we can do is come out here tomorrow with a different attitude and a lot more enthusiasm and get better. I don't know about you guys, but I get excited when you make a big hit or perform a drill perfectly. Get excited about it; I'm sure none of the coaches out here are going to complain because you're getting excited."

I got back tonight and I just kept thinking about how to motivate them. I decided to give them an assignment. I made a slip of paper with spots to fill out a Personal Goal, and a Football Goal. Under those spots is another line saying "To achieve my goal I need to:" I'm going to tell the kids you can take this as a joke or you can take it seriously. It is all about what you want to get out of it. Everyone is going to have to fill out the slip and return it to me.

I think by better understanding what the kids want to do I can organize some drills to help them achieve their goals and get better. I've seen a lot of improvement in some of the basic skills, but now it is just trying to put all the skills together that they kind of forget what they were taught.

I saw Jen and Anna tonight. I probably spent a little too much time over there than I should have. I got to get some of my reading for tomorrow started, but I would have liked to finish more of it. It was fun to see them. Anna opened up a little bit more tonight. It was kind of cool. She was interested in how the DAT went for me. That was cool. It seems like she is not as shy now that I have been hanging around more.

I need to write my goals too. I think the assignment is worth doing. So I'm going to do it.