My coaching debut

As Mom enjoys her time in Chicago, I took over as the novice coach. Now the the novice team from last year probably started laughing when they heard this news. And I can't say that I blame them. I mean, when the coach (my mom) says, "Do a back somersault" and you do a forward one, who can blame them. Needless to say that was the very first move they saw out of me. But hard work, sore arms, faking laps during the summer and working on skulling in the teeny GCC pool, I like to think that I've mastered the basics. Mastered is definitely a relative term. I'm okay with that though.

What started as "Katie and Molly will want to see you," has turned into me swimming Monday and Friday nights. On Monday nights, I have my own class with Paige and Jane's mom (If I knew how to spell her last name, I would, but I would completely butcher it, so I'm just calling her Jane's mom). Before that though, I help mom with the four novices. And because the intermediate team is so big this year, 3 coaches are definitely needed. So as mom went off to Chicago, I went off the pool. Friday I was really nervous. We survived the class and we practiced. Tonight I only had three of the girls, but we had a lot of fun. We worked on timing, underwater swims, front pike takedowns, dolphins, back somersaults and shrimps. Let's also say that we have a couple space cadettes in our class. Not that they don't love the sport or have fun, but when the music is going they like to watch the intermediate classes. And I can't really blame them because I like to watch them too. One of the space cadettes was working with mom last week on her shrimp, and couldn't get it at all. Enough so that mom had to get in the water with her. I know that the majority of you reading this have no idea what a shrimp is. Here is my attempt at a description: You start flat on your stomach with your legs out straight, face down in the water. You bring your torso down so that it is at a 90 degree angle with your legs, which are still at the surface of the water. From there you take one of your legs and flip it over your body so that you are upside down in the water doing a split. You hold that for a couple seconds, then bring your legs together so that you are vertical and your feet are pointed and your feet are sticking out of the water. It is really important to be straight so that you sink straight, and then you pull your legs in, do a half turn and come back out of the water. Yea, it's hard. So this little girl couldn't get it at all. When we practiced straight legs, she couldn't get it then. Reluctantly I told her to try the shrimp. I am very glad I did. Her legs were straight. Her split was beautiful. She held her feet above the water. When she came out of the water she had the biggest smile on her face, while my chin was on my knees, and she knew she had succeeded. She wanted to do nothing else for the rest of the class. At the end of class I made her go get her mother who was watching her younger sister in the little pool. I explained to her that this was the move my mom was working on with her last Monday. She gave me a high five and said "That was like....GOOD!" and it was. Tonight was a definite self-esteem booster and I loved every minute of it.