Coaching and teaching

The opening week of coaching was great, but the second week has lost some of its sheen. The kids are off "try out" mode and doing a bit of grumbling every now and then. They are also getting listless. I always struggle with what to do with the rest of the kids during batting practice - it gets boring out there. I have a young, young team - the youngest I have ever taken to varsity (5 seniors, 5 juniors, 10 sophomores and freshmen) - and I will have to really stay on them this year.

Luckily, I have help. And one thing about my coaching - and I'm always wondering about it, because it's something that comes less naturally to me than other things - is that today I looked around me and saw three former players helping out. One is a graduate of Georgetown, who I coached when I was an assistant coach six years ago, so he's a bit older. One is a sophomore at Duke University, playing football. And one is a freshman at a small east coast college, where he is playing college baseball. All three were helping out with practice today, and it made me think about legacy a little bit - having former players come back and coach and help out makes me think things are working somehow.

(By the way, four of my players from last year are playing college baseball this year. One is the first two-sport athlete at his school, while another received a four-year scholarship from a local college to play ball. Hopefully I'll be seeing a bunch more of them back to help out.)

I'm starting to get exhausted, though. I come home and sink into my chair. I am currently trying to put together a lesson that has students look at critical essays of Morrison's Song of Solomon, and have been researching using my Towson Library ID, but have found only about five of them that I think are suitable. I want to get the class into groups of 2-3, but unless I find six or seven more, I'll have to increase my group sizes. Then, I have to figure out what exactly I want the students to do with the critical essays. Something that will take just about two days of class time. Something that requires them to identify the thesis of the critical essay, and construct some sort of a response to it, then talk about it with the class. Hmmm. I'm not really sure. I need to think some more about it, but my head is hurting from exhaustion.