Last night I started a new adventure. I feel a debt of gratitude to my rugby club, not only for making me feel welcome when I first turned up to play touch rugby a couple of years back and ever since, but for helping me keep my sanity through making me feel wanted, a valuable member of the squad, letting me push myself as a player and get that frustration and stress out on the field.
Ever since that first night I have felt like I wanted to give something back to the club and last summer that journey began when I chose to not only subscribe as a player but electing to pay a little extra to become a club vice president. Last night the next step was taken, and with the injuries of the past year or so it has come at about the right time. Last night I started down the path of becoming a qualified coach.
Now, in a room full of other new coaches, I was one of only 5 males which gives an enormous indication at how well Lichfield do at training the female side of the game, and in fact I believe everyone there (22 people) except me wanted to be either a mini-junior coach (mixed boy/girl) or age range girls coach. My motivation was slightly different in this respect. I want to help coach adults. I want to be the person who when someone rocks up after 10-15 years of not playing, takes newcomers under their wing the way the Director of Rugby and veterans manager took me in and helped me. Not often I could say that the person in charge of a national league side has time to spend half an hour on a Monday night after everyone else has gone home from touch, to help me hone my techniques in the scrum, lineout and ruck. Those precious hours were invaluable to me (after all, as a veteran I am no where near fit enough to mix with the boys in the first team training sessions).
So was it done to me, so I shall pass it forward and do the same to others. I can't play forever, but I can be involved.
No comments:
Post a Comment