If you do,* maybe come bullshit about it here.

As background, I coached baseball when I lived in Chicago for two seasons. I wasn't very good at it, and (intentionally) served as "guy with a big bag of baseballs" who could be counted on to show up to practice twice a week. When I moved back to DC, I started coaching track at a high school near where I grew up. I have been an assistant for cross country since I was hired. I was an assistant for track for one season, then promoted to head coach for two seasons, then stepped back to assistant when my other job(s) conflicted with administrative requirements of being a head coach. Since then, I've been an assistant coach for track, left more or less to run the distance runners (hereforth defined as 800m on up) as I see fit.

It's been fun. I know I wont be able to do it forever, but I start every season expecting it to be my last one and then see some underclassman make the big leap forward and tell myself "well, I've got to see what this looks like when he's done cooking."

Possible topics of interest:

-Is coaching girls really different than coaching boys? How?

-How do you avoid one-size-fits-all motivation?

-What's your biggest individual success/failure?

-If you're at a school, how does the overall athletic environment there help/hurt you?

-How did your team do this year / How does your team look this year?

Or anything else of interest. I have a very indulgent social circle of smart, interested people who are happy to listen to me prattle on about this but don't really know anything about it directly. And I know people who do the same thing as me but it's weird talking to them about it because we're talking about the same kids, etc.

*If you don't, consider volunteering some of your time. It's usually kind of a pain to get looped in with most good organizations (more organized rec leagues, but especially schools) which, understandable, want to make sure you're not there for any villainous reasons. But it's worth it. And if you're like me and hate the idea of being in charge, I can assure you that most youth coaches would be thrilled to have somebody show up and say "I don't want to have any opinions, but I'm here to help things run smoothly by clicking a stopwatch (or whatever)."

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad