FAN: Kids Are Hilarious

My team had a tough assignment last night. We had to play against our own school. The only reason I'm coaching is that we had too many girls go out for JV - so it was either recruit more coaches or there would have to be tryouts and cuts. One JV team is made up of only the best 6th graders. This is the team that would exist if there was only 1 JV coach. The remaining 5th and 6th graders are graded and divided equally to the other 3 JV teams. In essence you have kids in the same classrooms on different "teams" even though all the uniforms are the same. I didn't realize going into this that the teams would have to play each other.

The two teams met at midcourt with the ref and said a prayer and and my Captain and Co-Captain stayed out for the coin toss which we lost. I had my starters in and only two reserves on the bench last night. The first girl serving for the other team tossed the ball and hit it about four feet. Nerves. First ball to start match....call it what you will. I look over and my bench is giggling which I wasn't happy about. You get a second attempt at overhand serves in JV on every girl's first turn serving. She tossed again and attempted to "punch" the ball and the result was not pretty at all. This time I looked over and my bench was laughing. As we rotated to serve I walked over and knelt down to talk to the girls. I told them it wasn't nice to laugh, just think if the girl's parents saw them, think about how you feel when you miss a serve...etc. I quickly put it out of my mind and went back to the game. It did strike me as odd about who seemed to be the
instigator. It seemed a little out of line for her. Let's call her Jane.

We won the game rather easily to push us to 3-1. After homework last night I had a coversation about the game with Still A Stroke. She correctly pointed out that their team didn't shift into any kind of 'serve receive' formation and maybe that's why we seemed to serve so well. I told her that I had to correct two of her friends on the bench and that I wasn't too happy about it. I told her they were laughing at the first server. This would be a SUPERB place to point out that Stroke is a chip off the old FAN. She has my sense of humor and affection for quick wit. Now she started laughing. Her laugh was so genuine that it made me start laughing. We were eating ice cream and I caught her in the middle of a bite and she couldn't swallow. It was a funny scene. She eventually was able to half mutter..."That's because you don't know the whole story". Wow. Ok. I can't WAIT to hear the whole story. When she finally composed herself, she told me between giggles
that the first server...."is Jane's arch enemy and yesterday on the playground she told Jane that nobody on our team could return her serve that it's that good". That's word-for-word. "Arch Enemy". Precious. I had a Lex Luther - we all did.

Satisfaction exists at all levels. If you crow, don't you almost deserve to eat crow? I'm not the church lady. I'm not going to preach to these kids about anything but volleyball. What I said to the girls on the bench was the first time I've ever said anything corrective with the exception of 'Let's Focus'. While it may not be in great taste to giggle at another's struggles in a game, I completely get where my girls were coming from. I'm a competitve BEAST. Ask Mrs. Fan, ask Stroke, ask Sis, ask Dad....heck, ask Dog. From the viewpoint I got which may or may not be 100% true (although my daughter is not known to even fib occassionally), they were just hanging out at recess doing their own thing when they were approcahed by two girls on the other team who did some trash talking. Well Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and there is Karma. This wasn't a thing between teams as my daughter went right over to one of the other girls after the game to talk like
the game never happened. This was personal....in 5th grade!

I got a good chuckle from knowing the Paul Harvey, and I realize it's a good teaching point for my next practice....I'm not going to tell them to not taunt or talk trash, I'm going to tell them the story of a girl who talked trash and then had to be embarrassed to go to school today to get whatever was coming to her today. Yes, I'm the camp counselor who will let your kids out of the cabin at night to settle any real or perceived scores.