Category Archives: Coaching

Things Are Coming Up Steve

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The past two weeks have been excellent. Nothing too strenuous in the classrooms, no massive problems to deal with, and no real debbie downers. I’m almost done with my second full week of coaching, my foot feels fine and I’m back into running, and I haven’t felt too bogged down with work to not make it out on the weekends.

Over spring break I messed up my foot pretty bad, all a result of my stupidity. My knee got real tight over one run and the next day, rather than not run, I thought maybe if I ran it would “loosen up” my knee. Well what happened is I favored the knee, and as a result, ran funny on my other foot and pulled something there. I also feel like a good reason as to why the foot wasn’t getting better faster is because I was using very old and beat up Puma gym shoes. Off to Scheels I went. I needed running shoes and gym shoes. I find that if I try to do any lateral movement in running shoes I really blister badly so I needed two separate.Also, because my foot was pretty messed up, I made sure to look for shoes with lots of support. Here’s what I ended up with: The stability UnderArmour gym shoes and the AdiZero Boston running shoes. Initially the plan was to buy both and within a week return a pair, because they were both kind of expensive for my normal range, then I decided quickly I needed both. I can make them both last a lot longer this way too.

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Too Busy to Blog!?

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So I haven’t blogged in about a week now, which is my largest drought since starting my own website. But, isn’t that a good thing?!? I’ve been so busy with other things going on that I haven’t had time to talk about them? So that’s my justification, life is so busy, in a great way, that I haven’t had time to actually blog about random informercial stuff and other randomness.

This week was my first week of coaching, which has been SWEET! It is a blast and the two hours really does feel like a half hour to me right now. I feel like that may change slightly as the season progresses and I start losing steam, but right now I love it. I have an OK group of kids; there is a clear tiered division of skills between players. At first I was really scared that I would start to run out of d rills and wouldn’t make it that fun for the kids, but Mike gave me a huge amount of flashcards with some drills and games on them so I can keep it fresh for the kids. I also love getting to rock my track jackets and warmup pants, every day. God I miss Drake, where all I ever wore to class was a hat, T-shirt, and athletic pants or shorts. Can’t teach in that.

I went to a new Thai place this week, Thai Flavors, over on SE 14th. I am pretty sure they are owned by Cool Basil or they have the same owners, because the menus were almost identical. Even the levels of hot (Iowa Hot and Thai Hot) were the same.Very good actually, probably second best to Ban Thai. I also went to Ban Thai this week, which as always was amazing.

Started cooking some more, making some noodles with garlic, onion, basil, mushrooms, and crab meat. Good stuff. Working my way up to making full Pad Thai. This weekend I’ll get some more cooking in. Thinking about making some pizza or some chicken dish. Let’s hope the weekend is as awesome as the week has been!

Conditioning with the Soccer Team

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Formal practices are still not yet allowed because of Iowa High School Athletic Association rules, but the teams are still allowed to condition.  Because Mike, the head coach, is still coaching bowling,  I am in charge of running the conditioning practices on Mondays and Wednesdays.  I love it.  I’d love to say this isn’t a “I’m a man!” type moment, but it kind of is.  Every day I have the kids do a ten minute warm up run.  Today some kids decided ten minutes straight was too much, and started walking and going to get a drink.  I carried on as if everything was normal and after ten minutes they did their normal stretches, and then waited for my next instructions.  I coolly told them that not being able to run for ten minutes straight was unacceptable, so they’d have to try it again.  They learned real fast that when I say run, that means run.  Don’t think I’m too evil though, I run with them!  I’m also trying another tactic to work them on conditioning, and maybe some mental acuity as well.  Every time they get water, I follow it up with several leg lifts, where they have to hold their legs six inches above the ground and hold it for thirty seconds.  So far they haven’t picked up on it yet, but I can’t wait for the Ah ah moment where they decide not to take a water break (unless they really need one) and don’t have to do leg lifts.

Stoked to Coach

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Today was the first day that I began doing some actual duties related to the soccer team.  The season does not start until March, but already some work is underway.  Today Mike and I began looking for the coaches gear we wanted; we’re getting ourselves polos and shorts.  I’ll see if I can barter my way to getting a good track jacket as well.  So that’s pretty darn exciting.  Also, preseason workouts start the week after finals week, which is next week, so already afterschool events are starting for me.  Starting on the 21st we will be doing every Monday, Wednesday and Friday conditioning.  Should be pretty simple for now.  If they want to kick the ball around then we are going to tell them to go find a place somewhere else because we’re technically not allowed to coach until spring break time.  Conditioning doesn’t count.  And I have no problem staying late at school for an extra hour three days a week.  I feel like my sleep time may begin to drop a bit though.  We’ll have to see what happens in the following weeks;  I have a general idea of how practices should be run, but I will be spending the majority of the time following Mike’s lead.