Tonight, my Spring 2011 U7 soccer team — the Comets — had its end-of-season celebration. We congregated at the local CiCi's pizza (which was very accommodating to our party of thirty or so, by the way) for some food and a trophy presentation. As part of the event, I shared some facts about our season in a "by the numbers" format:
- 13 weeks in the season
- 25 degrees Fahrenheit the maximum daily temperature rose over the course of the season
- 45 team-wide emails I sent
- 10 games played (5 wins, 2 losses, and 3 draws)
- 10 goals allowed
- 26 goals scored
- 10 players on the team
- 4 scorers
- 0 injuries
Personally, the highlights of the season are the ones not reflected in the numbers. It's been great to witness each player's improvement in terms of ball handling and understanding of the game. It's been great to share the coaching experience again with a close friend with a similar coaching philosophy. It's been great to see how my youngest son's love of the game and hard work has rubbed off on my oldest boy, providing the three Pilato guys another common interest.
Had I to do it again, would I change anything? Good grief, yes. That practice where the planned activity flopped and I didn't have a backup plan in mind already? Yeah, I'd do that differently. Those moments in heated matches where I didn't keep my cool? Yup, I'd just bench myself for those. My verbose evangelism on the coaches-only discussion forum about keeping the tournament focused on education rather than competition? Pretty sure those didn't earn me any friends. So, yeah. I'd change some things.
But my hope is that the kids were largely shielded from or oblivious to their coach's failures, and that next season, I'll be able to post one more statistic:
- 10 players returning to soccer from the Spring 2011 season
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