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Things, generally copacetic
Jan. 17th, 2013 05:57 pmCrew started up again this week. I've had mixed feelings, heading into this season, mostly associated with transitioning out of the job of head coach and into the job of _____??!! I had to take a minute or two to re-read some papers that contain the job description, which is, "Team Coach." I've been calling it, "Fairy Godmother." To some extent, this was a position created for someone who is in limbo because they aren't a student - someone like me.
In many ways, it suits me well, as I can still contribute actual coaching effort, without getting bogged down in the planning work. You might think a coach's job is to be on the water, teaching people how to row. I rarely got to do that in the fall, but the occasions when I did were good, based on the progress I observed, what the rowers reported to me, and the questions they asked. At the same time, it's a difficult switch to make when I was just starting to feel like I was hitting my stride with the job, which involved time reading and responding to e-mails and text messages, meeting with the leadership team, sorting out boat lineups and the practice schedule, planning out workouts to prepare the crew for races, and contacting other coaches and teams to get the ball rolling for racing. It would be one thing if there were any way for anyone to pay me for the work, but as it stands, I have to prioritize my job first, and that makes it difficult to give the head coaching job its due.
So I have to take a step back and give the leadership team and the new head coach some space to do their jobs. The hardest part in all of that, for me, always, is allowing other people to make mistakes and do things differently from how I would do them. On the one hand, I can speak authoritatively about many aspects of running a rowing program, based on 17 years of rowing experience across many rowing programs in many places, and based on life experience. But on the other hand, every group of people winds up creating its own group identity and culture, so what flies in one place might flop in another. And if I flap my gums too much, there's the danger that I'll be tuned out.
All of that means that I have to remind myself to take a step back for a while. The good news is, I think my goals for this spring are better-aligned with the team's goals, than my goals were last fall. Over the fall, my big focus was on racing in the single at the Head of the Charles, while the team's focus was divided across other goals - Pumpkinhead and the Marathon Row, primarily, in sweep boats. This spring, my focus is on general strength and conditioning as preparation for the World Masters Games in August. That goal is far enough on the horizon that I can row and race sweep through the spring (with periodic sculling), and then switch to focusing on sculling through the end of the spring and summer.
Along with all of that, it's a great relief to discover/realize that I should be getting a break from the more intensive cricket work for a couple of months, here. I'm mostly crunching numbers these days, to verify that my sample sizes are large enough, and if they are, I won't need to repeat another round of the long-term experiment. That was the thing that really put me over the top in the fall.
In many ways, it suits me well, as I can still contribute actual coaching effort, without getting bogged down in the planning work. You might think a coach's job is to be on the water, teaching people how to row. I rarely got to do that in the fall, but the occasions when I did were good, based on the progress I observed, what the rowers reported to me, and the questions they asked. At the same time, it's a difficult switch to make when I was just starting to feel like I was hitting my stride with the job, which involved time reading and responding to e-mails and text messages, meeting with the leadership team, sorting out boat lineups and the practice schedule, planning out workouts to prepare the crew for races, and contacting other coaches and teams to get the ball rolling for racing. It would be one thing if there were any way for anyone to pay me for the work, but as it stands, I have to prioritize my job first, and that makes it difficult to give the head coaching job its due.
So I have to take a step back and give the leadership team and the new head coach some space to do their jobs. The hardest part in all of that, for me, always, is allowing other people to make mistakes and do things differently from how I would do them. On the one hand, I can speak authoritatively about many aspects of running a rowing program, based on 17 years of rowing experience across many rowing programs in many places, and based on life experience. But on the other hand, every group of people winds up creating its own group identity and culture, so what flies in one place might flop in another. And if I flap my gums too much, there's the danger that I'll be tuned out.
All of that means that I have to remind myself to take a step back for a while. The good news is, I think my goals for this spring are better-aligned with the team's goals, than my goals were last fall. Over the fall, my big focus was on racing in the single at the Head of the Charles, while the team's focus was divided across other goals - Pumpkinhead and the Marathon Row, primarily, in sweep boats. This spring, my focus is on general strength and conditioning as preparation for the World Masters Games in August. That goal is far enough on the horizon that I can row and race sweep through the spring (with periodic sculling), and then switch to focusing on sculling through the end of the spring and summer.
Along with all of that, it's a great relief to discover/realize that I should be getting a break from the more intensive cricket work for a couple of months, here. I'm mostly crunching numbers these days, to verify that my sample sizes are large enough, and if they are, I won't need to repeat another round of the long-term experiment. That was the thing that really put me over the top in the fall.
