Teaching Elementary, My Dear Watson

6 - Meetings

6

Meetings

Tuesday, September 13

Kevin looked out at the open play areas wrapped around three sides of the buildings, with grass fields and paved courts for softball, football, soccer, basketball, and a track of sorts circling much of the longest open space. He was dressed for comfort in the bright sun's warmth: white polo shirt, tan shorts, sneakers, and sunglasses.

I'm grateful to be here rather than at some city site with nothing but concrete playgrounds.

With home visits and teaching organized, Kevin started pondering his upcoming coaching responsibilities. Flag football would be first, and he'd coach both girls and boys separately. Of course, he wanted his teams to succeed and he'd prefer winning often, but Kevin knew that abilities varied widely. First, he'd see what he had in terms of talent, then put together a strategy that fit their athletic skills.

Sports have always been so important to me, more so than academics. Maybe because reading and math came so easily and athletics did not. If I'd matured physically as early as I did intellectually, I could have been a star at a young age. But it was good the way things turned out because I learned my work ethic from sports since I had to try harder to compete. That's why teaching character is so much more important than winning. Can't always have talent, speed, size, or strength, but effort and attitude are choices we control. That's how I'll help my teams.

In his experience, girls had almost no background in playing football at this age. Kevin, his friends, and the boys he grew up with tended to use their free time after school and on weekends to play whatever sport was in season. Girls did not. But now a new law had passed five years earlier, referred to as Title IX. No discrimination in sports seemed to be leveling the field in terms of college athletic scholarships available to females. But girls' hobbies still tended to center around dolls and boys more than sports and games.

Hopefully, that will change now.

During girls' tryouts, speed and raw athleticism mattered. For the boys, he'd want to know more about skills such as passing, catching, and kicking. If a girl had those abilities so much the better, but Kevin expected to teach them how to do all three. He discussed his options with Johnny Avers after school.

"Good to see ya. Glad you got the room so clean. I'm allergic to dirt, so you keep me healthy."

"You'd best behave then, 'cause if not, this room gonna look like Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl!"

Kevin laughed, then said, "Hey Johnny. I could use some intelligent advice, but you're all I have available." Avers smiled. "Run something by you regarding tryouts for flag football?"

"Sure, man. Wassup?"

"For both girls and boys, I'm thinking to clock their fifty-yard dash, as well as time them in a separate race weaving among cones, and a third like the suicides we used to do for basketball, where we would run back and forth between lines as a measure of quickness. For boys, I'll let them compete for the quarterback position by seeing how they pass for distance and accuracy. I'll have them try out for receivers by catching passes while running horizontal and vertical routes. For kickers, I'll measure their punting distance and accuracy. There are no field goals in flag football, just touchdowns, and a run or pass for the extra point. But for the girls, I expect to teach skills, so I haven't planned to test them for those. Any feedback?"

"Sounds good. That's kind of what our coaches did when I played as a kid. What about a backward running test so you'll know how they'll do on defense?"