The end of the season...

Well, my first season as head coach at Mill Middle school just came to an end.  I cannot believe that I did not have time to write.  I absolutely loved coaching this group of girls, but working full time and having a neurological disorder on top of coaching GOTR is absolutely exhausting.  My place is a mess.  I haven’t gone grocery shopping in over a month, and now I have the flu.

I was blessed to finally get a GREAT assistant coach who was dedicated enough to split her time between being an attorney and helping me out.  She was in between jobs when she first came on board with me, but remained committed to assisting despite landing a job just a few weeks into the season.  I truly appreciate that kind of dedication in a person, and there are not many people who are like that.

I didn’t want her to stress over her new job, so I really did all of the lesson planning and didn’t ask much of her other than just showing up.  Showing up is about 85% of the battle as long as at least one coach has read over the lesson.  The other thing that was cool was I no longer felt like the “bad guy” when I had to sometimes yell at the girls, because my assistant raised her voice a few times too. 

Many of these girls were… wild… I loved them all but the quiet little girls who were just starting middle school quickly turned into giggling, silly kids who liked to talk over me.  Horseplay was a huge issue – but we did our best to put a stop to it.  “Coach Nicole!  She hit me!”  “Coach Nicole, she started it!”  The one day I lost it when we were running laps and I saw a couple of girls pushing and shoving each other while they ran.  “Hey!  Knock it off!  If you do that during the race they’ll throw you off the course.”

At the end of each lesson, though, there was a sense of accomplishment.  If the girls didn’t like to run, they at least liked the lessons.  Sometimes they liked them too much!  There were days when the girls ALL had stories to tell about something relating to the lesson… and sometimes I had to cut them off if they wanted to tell an entire story line of a movie that they thought was relevant to the topic… with only 90 minutes, you know, you’ve gotta let them know that it’s great that they all want to share, but we have to keep moving forward with the lesson if we want to run.

Yesterday, every girl crossed the finish line.  A couple of the girls had run 5ks before, but the girls who hadn’t  all had different reactions ranging from “it was okay” to “that was awesome!”  One girl was basically speechless and out of breath… her whole family was there to greet her at the finish line.  She didn’t look happy but I’m pretty sure that was how I looked the first time I ever finished a race.  In fact, I think that’s my normal reaction, even after I know I’ve placed.  So the chaos is now over.

At our last practice I told the girls that I was not going to return for the spring season, but perhaps for the fall.  I told them it was a lot to work full time and to do this (not to mention being disabled).  Two girls indicated that they would not do this again if I was not going to coach.  It kind of broke my heart.  I must be pretty good at this… and I’d hate to give up something that I am good at.

I have a lot of thinking to do.  I found out that I likely have arthritis in my knee.  Since I cannot have an MRI, there's a lot of speculation regarding cartilage damage.  I told my orthopedic surgeon that one dream of mine in life was to finish a marathon and that the Buffalo Marathon was on May 26^th.   I also indicated that I was afraid that if I didn’t run the marathon this year, I didn’t think it would happen due to the way my dystonia is progressing.  He told me he would help me make it happen.  So, let the marathon training begin!  (after I get over the flu).