Dear Fellow Coaches,

Thank you for the work you do every single day in gyms across our country.  You have such impact on the children with whom you work.  You teach them skills so far beyond cartwheels and back handsprings.  The lessons you teach them are so far reaching that they will carry them with them for the rest of their lives.  Never under-estimate the impact you have on their lives every day.

I was utterly flattered and totally thrilled when Tony asked me to help out with his new project.  He asked me to write an article about anything I wanted to cover.  I racked my brains for days trying to come up with something I wanted to cover; a drill, a lesson plan, something about early childhood development.  There were numerous topics I could choose from, but none of them jumped out at me.  I kept thinking, and trying to wring it out of my brain.  ..but I couldn’t come up with anything that really struck me in the moment.

Until today.

Our girls competed at Judge’s Cup a couple of weeks ago.  Like many meets, there was a photographer there taking pictures of the meet for later sale.  When they posted the pictures up on their website, I went to look at the pictures some of my parents told me about.  There were several really good pictures on the site, but four stood out to me as extremely special.

They weren’t pictures of perfect performances or awe-inspiring skills.  They were snapshots of the moments immediately following each girl’s performance at beam.  They were snapshot of the moments we share after each event when we touch base before going back to our seats.  I’m sure many of you know the moments of which I speak.  When the kid knows they did well, and walk over to their coach beaming with pride or they know they have blown an event and they run to their coach for comfort.

Those moments.

So, I ordered the pictures.

They arrived in my mailbox today, and as I opened them and looked at them, my singular thought was, “These are the moments  for which I coach.”

Let me share some of the moments I cherish…
[Read more…]