12. "Coached a high school ultimate team for a year - was an interesting expe..." In response to In response to 0
I played ultimate frisbee in college and club level for a few years after that and a friend of mine's sister asked us to help out with her high school ultimate club. It was sort of a different challenge because ultimate is a new and growing sport and a lot of people don't take it seriously (I agree there are a lot of aspects of it that are dumb and ridiculous) but I've enjoyed playing.
It was sort of a similar experience to what Selassie had doing jr bowling (I am also a bowler FYI) where you're trying to grow the sport. There were probably about 10-12 regulars who showed up to practice who I all loved but it was hard to actually find another team their age to play against. We did once or twice but most of the we ended up scrimmaging ourselves (with a couple older players mixed in to bring up the numbers).
The other thing since it's a club level sport and also not a traditional super competitive sport like basketball or football or something was just managing the make it competitive/challenging factor with the make it fun and make sure people still show up factor. Even with older players it's pretty split between people who have more competitive sports background (I played basketball and ran a bit so I fall in this camp) and the more awkward kids who wanted to do something active but fun.
The biggest success for sure to me was that a couple of those kids went on to play club ultimate frisbee in college so at least we didn't suck the love of the game from them. We only really did it that one year and I don't think I'm a good enough player where someone would actively look for me to coach anything but I'd help out a youth team again for sure.