I sat on the bleachers soaking in anticipation, drenched in dread, and as bad words that had been simmering in on tongue slipped out my teeth. I’m watching my son and his odyssey of the mind team (my team of boys) in their big odyssey of the mind performance. They (we) had been working for months. I had encouraged, goaded, guided and guilted them into productivity and production. Despite the twice weekly pandemonium “practices” that often left a portion of my house in messy clutter and my head just as disjointed, I’ve been swelling with pride at all they’ve created and mostly for not quitting (myself included). And now, caught up the frenzy of the regional tournament it seemed like all the work, time, energy was going down the tubes. The boys were killing it; and not in a good way.
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When I was in third grade I was on an odyssey of the mind team. I had no idea what I was doing. Neither did the rest of my rag-tag team or the busy mother that somehow got cajoled into coaching us. I can’t blame her too much for what happened none of us really knew how the program worked. Odyssey or OM is really something fantastic: a competitive program designed for kids to work together as a team to come up with creative and original ideas and solutions to problems without outside assistance. You can give the kids a tutorial on how to use the hot glue gun, but you can’t glue their props together for them. My team coach didn’t provide tutorials or even all of the guidelines or requirements of the competition. For the most part my team had little assistance aside from an adult upstairs while we tinkered in the basement below. We went to competition with our the balsa wood structure we had engineered to hold several pounds of weight, but discovered we lacked all of the performance elements of the other teams and when we had to remove the supports of our structure to make exacting height requirements we hadn’t realized, I was as crushed. Hot tears rolled down my face in shame at what I didn’t know and failed to do properly.
When I signed up to coach it wasn’t because I thought I would be great and I could maybe vindicate my loss by victory through my child. I signed up because my son wanted to be on a team and the school needed more coaches. I could try. I provided the boys with the contents of my recycling bins, served as scribe as they rattled off their ideas, asked them questions to get their juices flowing and discover potential problems on their own. Keeping the boys on task, upbeat, and unbloodied at the end of each meeting was a challenge I didn’t always achieve. I strained for patience, and broke into a yelling more than once when they bludgeoned each other or tracked purple paint through my sun room.
But more than everything I tried to stress into their minds we were there to have fun, do something creative and of their own invention. The boys built a vehicle made of broken down skate boards and an old key board stand that operated by a scissor style motion or rolled along surf board style. It felt like pulling teeth to get them motivated to finish it and the skit they created to present it in, but they did it. Just barely. And it was awesome.
As the boys outfitted themselves in the costumes they had made from foam packing materials, plastic bubble wrap and other trashbin items and found junk, and made last minute repairs to their cardboard set, I looked at all they had done. It looked like a hot mess of trash covered in paint, but they had made it. They were so were so excited and so proud at that moment. They had made it. I hugged them and told them to speak up and above all have fun as they lined up to go on for their competition slot.
The boys started their performance an missed lines, forgot required elements and didn’t display all the cool tricks their vehicle could do, I feared them feeling they way I once had. Though sour words were on my lips, I was surprised to discover they weren’t on theirs. They boys walked out happy. Even though they botched their planned performance, they were still pleased. They had fun. I didn’t quite understand it at first. And I’ve been thinking about it since.
I did all I was able to reasonably do for my team, but I couldn’t make them winners advancing to the state competition. I hadn’t filled over the loss of my own youth with victory for them. Our experience was riddled with coaching inability: not knowing how to coach them to their problem, motivating them to do much as some of the other teams had done, or even keep them from getting spilling paint on themselves and my house. But I succeeded in something else I hadn’t realized until that moment when I stopped the under-breath soft swears and really looked at those crazy-costumed kids. They were happy. What they had done was enough. And what I had done as their coach was enough too. I couldn’t have a do over on my own loss, take a recount from the merits from my son and team. But I could be happy not matter what. I don’t need to look back on what has upset or frustrated me and cringe at what I should have known and what I could have done. Success isn’t achievement. Even messing up is a partial victory- it meant you still showed up and did the work to get to that point.
The tears from my own third grade loss are long since cold and dry, but its long overdue for me to wipe them away and think of my own success. I didn’t earn any merits, but I sure learned some. My time in third grade was only as wasted as I believed it to be. Now I realize it wasn’t. I’m glad my team did too, and ever so much faster than I did.
What lessons have you learned from coaching?
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